CVE-2026-44210: medium-severity vulnerability in kata-containers
Kata Containers have VM Escape via virtiofsd Argument Injection through Default-Enabled Pod Annotations
Published · Updated
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13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 5.8epss 0.6%
Kata Containers is an open source project focusing on a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. Versions prior to 3.31.0 ship with a default configuration that allows pod creators to inject arbitrary command-line arguments into the virtiofsd process through the `io.katacontainers.config.hypervisor.virtio_fs_extra_args` pod annotation. By injecting `-o source=/` along with `--no-announce-submounts` and `--sandbox=none`, an attacker can override the virtiofsd shared directory to serve the entire host root filesystem into the guest VM. Combined with the `kernel_params` annotation (also enabled by default) to activate the agent debug console, the attacker can mount the host filesystem from inside the VM and read or write any file on the host, including /etc/shadow. Version 3.31.0 patches the issue.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:P
Affected products
kata-containers · kata-containersRelated CVEs — kata-containers
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2026-50540CRITICALKata Containers: Config Path Annotation Arbitrary File LoadingEPSS 0.6%CVE-2026-24054HIGHKata Containers Runtime: Host block device can be hotplugged to the VM if the container image is malformed or contains no layersEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-41326HIGHKata Containers: CopyFile Policy Subversion via SymlinksEPSS 0.3%CVE-2025-58354MEDIUMKata Containers coco-tdx malicious host can circumvent initdata verificationEPSS 0.3%CVE-2026-24834CRITICALKata Container to Guest micro VM privilege escalationEPSS 0.2%CVE-2026-47243CRITICALKata guest escape: runtime-rs guest-root to host-root escape via virtiofsEPSS 0.2%