CVE-2025-65105: apptainer UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-65105 is a medium (CVSS 5.3) UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in apptainer. EPSS estimates a 0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 02-12-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 02-12-2025
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Apptainer is an open source container platform. In Apptainer versions less than 1.4.5, a container can disable two of the forms of the little used --security option, in particular the forms --security=apparmor:<profile> and --security=selinux:<label> which otherwise put restrictions on operations that containers can do. The --security option has always been mentioned in Apptainer documentation as being a feature for the root user, although these forms do also work for unprivileged users on systems where the corresponding feature is enabled. Apparmor is enabled by default on Debian-based distributions and SElinux is enabled by default on RHEL-based distributions, but on SUSE it depends on the distribution version. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.4.5.

• CWE-61UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) FollowingThe product, when opening a file or directory, does not sufficiently account for when the file is a symbolic link that resolves to a target outside of the intended control sphere. This could allow an attacker to cause the product to operate on unauthorized files.
• CWE-706Use of Incorrectly-Resolved Name or ReferenceThe product uses a name or reference to access a resource, but the name/reference resolves to a resource that is outside of the intended control sphere.