🛡️ CVE-2025-9566 — podman

🟠 CVSS 8.1 — High ✅ No Known Exploit NVD
8.1
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

podman kube play symlink traversal vulnerability

Impact

The podman kube play command can overwrite host files when the kube file contains a ConfigMap or Secret volume mount and the volume already contains a symlink to a host file.

This allows a malicious container to write to arbitrary files on the host BUT the attacker only controls the target path not the contents that will be written to the file. The contents are defined in the yaml file by the end user.

Requirements to exploit:

podman kube play must be used with a ConfigMap or Secret volume mount AND must be run more than once on the same volume. All the attacker has to do is create the malicious symlink on the volume the first time it is started. After that all following starts would follow the symlink and write to the host location.

Patches

Fixed in podman v5.6.1

https://github.com/containers/podman/commit/43fbde4e665fe6cee6921868f04b7ccd3de5ad89

Workarounds

Don't use podman kube play with ConfigMap or Secret volume mounts.

PR with test for CI

Adding on 9/8/2025 by @TomSweeneyRedHat , this is the PR containing the test in CI: https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/27001

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity high, availability high.

Affected software

CVE-2025-9566 is recorded against 6 packages.

  • github.com/containers/podman
  • github.com/containers/podman/v2
  • github.com/containers/podman/v3
  • github.com/containers/podman/v4
  • github.com/containers/podman/v5
  • unknown

Timeline and source

Published on 8 September 2025 and last revised on 4 February 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

github.com (Advisory)
github.com (Fix)

CVE-2025-9566 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity High
CVSS Score 8.1
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2025-09-08
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-02-04

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
github.com/containers/podman — —
github.com/containers/podman/v2 — —
github.com/containers/podman/v3 — —
github.com/containers/podman/v4 — —
github.com/containers/podman/v5 — —
unknown — —

Similar Threats

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