CVE-2026-50540

Summary

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 Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
kata-containerskata-containers< 4.0.0affected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-20: CWE-20: Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-22: CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

References