🛡️ CVE-2026-50195 — containerd

🔴 CVSS 9.9 — Critical ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-345 NVD
9.9
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

containerd: CRI checkpoint import allows local image tag poisoning

Impact

containerd's CRI checkpoint import process contains a vulnerability where it fails to validate the image references specified within a checkpoint image's configuration. An attacker with permissions to create pods can use a crafted checkpoint image to force containerd to pull a malicious image and assign it an arbitrary local tag, thereby poisoning the node's local image cache. Subsequently, if other pods on the same node attempt to use the poisoned tag with an IfNotPresent (or Never) pull policy, they will unknowingly execute the attacker's malicious image instead of the legitimate one. This can lead to a compromise of the affected pods, allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code under the victim pod's identity.

Patches

This bug has been fixed in the following containerd versions:

  • 2.3.2
  • 2.2.5
  • 2.1.9

Users should update to these versions to resolve the issue.

Workarounds

Users should only allow trusted images to be pulled.

Credits

The containerd project would like to thank Henry Beberman (@hbeberman) of Microsoft, the GKE Security Team using Gemini, Anthropic Research, in collaboration with Claude, and Robert Prast (@robertprast) who independently discovered and responsibly disclosed this issue in accordance with the [containerd security policy](https://github.com/containerd/project/blob/main/SECURITY.md).

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

To report a security issue in containerd:

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 changed, meaning a successful attack can affect components beyond the vulnerable one. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Weakness class

CVE-2026-50195 is classified as CWE-345: Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity. Data is trusted without confirming it really came from the claimed source and was not altered.

Affected software

CVE-2026-50195 is recorded against 3 packages.

  • containerd (from 2.3.0 up to 2.3.2)
  • github.com/containerd/containerd
  • github.com/containerd/containerd/v2

Timeline and source

Published on 1 July 2026 and last revised on 2 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from NVD.

References

github.com

Details

Severity CRITICAL
CVSS Score 9.9
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-345
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-07-01
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-07-02
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
containerd 2.3.0 2.3.2
github.com/containerd/containerd — —
github.com/containerd/containerd/v2 — —

Exploit Protection

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CVE-2026-50195 carries CVSS 9.9 Critical rating. BotEraser checks your installation against this and other known CVE records, and blocks IPs associated with exploit activity.

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