🛡️ CVE-2026-53492 — containerd

🔴 CVSS 9.6 — Critical ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-20 NVD
9.6
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

containerd CRI checkpoint restore CDI annotation smuggling

Impact

containerd's CRI implementation improperly trusts Container Device Interface (CDI) annotations found within untrusted checkpoint image metadata during container restoration. When restoring a container from a checkpoint, containerd preserves CDI-related annotations from the checkpoint archive rather than relying solely on the pod's create-time specification. This allows a user with pod creation permissions to bypass standard Kubernetes resource allocation and device plugin enforcement, injecting arbitrary CDI edits (such as device nodes and host mounts) into the restored container. Successful exploitation requires that the node has CDI enabled and contains a matching host CDI specification for the requested device; environments where CDI is disabled or lacking sensitive device specifications are not affected.

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. Recreating existing containers restored from untrusted checkpoints may be necessary to remove smuggled configuration.

Workarounds

Users can mitigate this issue by restricting the restoration of containers from untrusted checkpoint images. If Container Device Interface (CDI) capabilities are not utilized on the node, removing or temporarily relocating host CDI specifications from the default directories (/etc/cdi and /var/run/cdi) will eliminate the reachability of this vulnerability.

Credits

The containerd project would like to thank Robert Prast (@robertprast) for responsibly disclosing 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 none.

Weakness class

CVE-2026-53492 is classified as CWE-20: Improper Input Validation. The application accepts input without checking that it has the expected form, so malformed values reach code that assumes they are well formed.

Affected software

CVE-2026-53492 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 9.6
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
CWE CWE-20
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-2026-53492 carries CVSS 9.6 Critical rating. BotEraser checks your installation against this and other known CVE records, and blocks IPs associated with exploit activity.

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