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OpenAdvisories
Critical · 9.6 CVE-2026-50540 EUVD-2026-54679

Kata Containers: Config Path Annotation Arbitrary File Loading

Published Aug 7, 2026 · Updated Aug 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. 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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
kata-containers kata-containers < 4.0.0 —

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.

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 cri-o +1 No fix yet —
Azure Linux 3 kata-containers 3.32.0.kata0-5 —
Azure Linux 3 kata-containers-cc 3.15.0.aks0-20 —

References