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Critical · 9.2 CVE-2026-47243 EUVD-2026-54710GHSA-2gv2-cffp-j227GO-2026-5042

Kata guest escape: runtime-rs guest-root to host-root escape via virtiofs

Published Aug 7, 2026 · Updated Aug 10, 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. Prior to 3.31.0, the runtime-rs standalone virtio-fs path is vulnerable to a guest-root to host-root escape. In this configuration, Kata runs the host virtiofsd as root with --sandbox none --seccomp none, so an attacker with root-equivalent access inside the guest can bypass the guest virtio-fs client entirely by taking over the virtio-fs PCI device and building a virtqueue in userspace to submit raw FUSE requests directly to the host virtiofsd. A crafted FUSE_SYMLINK request whose new symlink name is an absolute host path is honored outside the configured shared directory, allowing guest root to create root-owned symlinks in sensitive host locations such as /etc/cron.d. By pointing such a symlink at a guest-controlled crontab payload reachable through a live runtime process's mount namespace, the attacker causes the host cron daemon to execute that payload as host root, crossing the Kata isolation boundary. This issue is fixed in version 3.31.0.

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-preview No fix yet —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers < 0.0.0-20260519062212-ffa59ce3aa78 0.0.0-20260519062212-ffa59ce3aa78 GHSA-2gv2-cffp-j227

Advisories 1

References