🛡️ CVE-2026-53489 — containerd

🟠 CVSS 8.0 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-61 NVD
8.0
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

Arbitrary host CRI log file read via symlink following in CRI checkpoint restore

Impact

A bug was found in containerd where the CRI plugin restores container.log from a checkpoint image without validating a symlinked path. This could result in reading an arbitrary file on the host via kubectl logs.

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

Ensure that only trusted images and checkpoints are used.

Credits

The containerd project would like to thank @gouldnicholas and @davidrxchester, Yuming Zhang and Song Li of Zhejiang University, Sangwon Ryu (@sangwon090), Henry Beberman (@hbeberman) of Microsoft, the GKE Security Team using Gemini, Anthropic Research, in collaboration with Claude, Robert Prast (@robertprast),

Kyle Elliott (@kyle-elliott-tob) of Trail of Bits, and Zhenchen Wang (@Plucky923), 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 with local access to the system, 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 none, availability none.

Affected software

CVE-2026-53489 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 MEDIUM
CVSS Score 8.0
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
CWE CWE-61
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 — —

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