CVE-2026-50540

critical EU-CRITICAL

EUVD alias: EUVD-2026-54679

Assigned by CNA: github_m

Published 2026-08-07 · Modified 2026-08-07

Discuss on Community Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

9.6

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

9.6

Description

Kata Containers is an open source project focusing on a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. Prior to version 4.0.0, kata-runtime is vulnerable to host code execution via an unvalidated configuration path annotation. The runtime accepts an arbitrary io.katacontainers.config_path pod annotation and loads the referenced host TOML file without restriction. As a result, a pod user who can place a file at a host-visible path can supply a configuration that selects an attacker-controlled hypervisor or virtio-fs daemon binary, executing code as root on the host. This issue is fixed in version 4.0.0.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

96%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-20 CWE-22

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.