CVSS 3.1
6.5 mediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVE-2026-121885 Podman: untrusted image labels allow auto-update to restart arbitrary systemd units
Medium (6.5) in red hat. EPSS 0.4% estimated probability of exploitation activity in the next 30 days.
On this page
A flaw was found in Podman. An attacker can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by supplying a container image containing crafted metadata labels. Podman's auto-update mechanism improperly trusts these image labels to determine which system services to restart. If a user runs the malicious container and auto-update processes it, arbitrary system services are restarted with the user's privileges, potentially allowing an attacker to shut down the host system when Podman runs with administrative privileges.
Severity
- EPSS
- 0.4% estimated probability of exploitation activity in the next 30 days; 32nd percentile. Scored 2026-11-13. A forecast for this CVE across the internet, not for your own systems.
- CISA's assessment (SSVC)
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial, assessed 2026-11-10. From CISA's Vulnrichment in the CVE List: whether it is exploited, whether exploiting it can be automated, and how much control it gives.
- CWE
- CWE-807 Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision
- OWASP Top 10
- A06:2025 Insecure Design
- Published
- Modified
- Assigned by
- redhat (CNA)
- NVD analysis
- Awaiting analysis
- Record from
- the NVD, synced
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Affected
- red hat:red hat enterprise linux 10
- red hat:red hat enterprise linux 8
- red hat:red hat enterprise linux 9
- red hat:red hat hardened images
- red hat:red hat openshift container platform 4
Versions
From the CNA's record in the CVE List.
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| podman | from 1.8.2 before 5.8.10 |
| podman | from 6.0.0 before 6.2.0 |
Fixed in
| Product | Fixed in |
|---|---|
| Red Hat Hardened Images | 6.1.4-1.4.hum1 |
Fix and patched versions
- Red Hat Red Hat Hardened Images: fixed in 6.1.4-1.4.hum1
- Red Hat: fixed package versions per release
Linux distributions
| Distribution | Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu | 26.04:LTS, 26.10 | podman | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-121885 |
| Red Hat | hummingbird:1 | podman, podmansh, podman-docker and 2 more | 5:6.1.4-1.4.hum1 | RHSA-2026:98992 |
| Azure Linux | 3 | libcontainers-common | no fix listed | AZL-113552 |
| Azure Linux | 3 | podman | no fix listed | AZL-113342 |
From the distributions' data via OSV.dev: Ubuntu Security Notices © Canonical Ltd., CC BY-SA 4.0; Red Hat Security Data © Red Hat, Inc., CC BY 4.0; Microsoft's Azure Linux vulnerability data, MIT. Modified: reformatted and linked to CVE records. Credits. On the distributions' own pages: Ubuntu · Red Hat.
Red Hat
Red Hat rates this Moderate.
This vulnerability is rated as Moderate impact because triggering it requires user interaction to pull and run an untrusted container image, and its blast radius is restricted to a denial of service via systemd unit restarts rather than arbitrary code execution. In default Red Hat Enterprise Linux configurations, the podman-auto-update timer is not enabled, meaning automated container processing does not occur unless explicitly configured by an administrator. Furthermore, in standard rootless container environments, systemd control is limited to the user's personal session, preventing unauthorized interference with core host services.
Do not use podman auto-update on untrusted containers or images. Before running an image, inspect its labels with podman image inspect --format '.Config.Labels' and verify that the io.containers.autoupdate and PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT labels are not set. For existing containers, inspect their labels and ensure that auto-update labels are configured correctly and only present on containers intended to use auto-update.
| Product | Package | State | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | podman | Fix deferred | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | container-tools:rhel8/podman | Fix deferred | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | podman | Fix deferred | |
| Red Hat Hardened Images | podman | Affected | |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | podman | Fix deferred |
Contains Red Hat Security Data © Red Hat, Inc., licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source: https://access.redhat.com/security/data. Modified: reformatted. Red Hat's page for CVE-2026-121885.