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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 5.8 CVE-2026-44210 EUVD-2026-48339GHSA-rr59-xxvx-96qrGO-2026-5638

Kata Containers have VM Escape via virtiofsd Argument Injection through Default-Enabled Pod Annotations

Published Jul 23, 2026 · Updated Jul 24, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Kata Containers is an open source project focusing on a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. Versions prior to 3.31.0 ship with a default configuration that allows pod creators to inject arbitrary command-line arguments into the virtiofsd process through the `io.katacontainers.config.hypervisor.virtio_fs_extra_args` pod annotation. By injecting `-o source=/` along with `--no-announce-submounts` and `--sandbox=none`, an attacker can override the virtiofsd shared directory to serve the entire host root filesystem into the guest VM. Combined with the `kernel_params` annotation (also enabled by default) to activate the agent debug console, the attacker can mount the host filesystem from inside the VM and read or write any file on the host, including /etc/shadow. Version 3.31.0 patches the issue.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
kata-containers kata-containers < 3.31.0 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Leap 16.0 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 kata-containers 3.32.0.kata0-1 —
Azure Linux 3 kata-containers-cc 3.15.0.aks0-20 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers < 0.0.0-20260519062212-ffa59ce3aa78 0.0.0-20260519062212-ffa59ce3aa78 GHSA-rr59-xxvx-96qr

Advisories 1

References