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Medium · 5.7 CVE-2026-64676 EUVD-2026-54711

Kata Containers: Unauthorized mem-agent ttRPC methods let an untrusted host tamper with confidential-guest memory

Published Aug 7, 2026 · Updated Aug 13, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Kata Containers is an open source implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 4.0.0, the kata-agent is vulnerable to an authorization bypass in confidential-guest memory management. In Confidential Containers (CoCo) deployments, the kata-agent enforces an OPA/Rego-based AgentPolicy that must authorize every ttRPC API call, forming the security boundary that prevents an untrusted host from directing the confidential guest. Two ttRPC methods introduced with the mem-agent feature are missing this authorization check, so an untrusted host can invoke them unconditionally regardless of the guest's policy configuration. When mem-agent is enabled (off by default), this lets the host tamper with in-guest memory management by forcing swap, aggressive eviction, or compaction, resulting in attacker-controlled availability and performance degradation of the confidential workload entirely outside the agent-policy boundary. The impact does not include memory disclosure or code execution, and severity is bounded by the precondition that mem-agent must be explicitly enabled. 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 kata-containers-preview No fix yet —

References