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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2026-121885 json

Podman: untrusted image labels allow auto-update to restart arbitrary systemd units

published yesterday modified yesterday also EUVD-2026-121147 , GHSA-55rm-rwr7-q2wr

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository podman-container-tools/podman. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 32%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A flaw was found in Podman. An attacker can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by supplying a container image containing crafted metadata labels. Podman's auto-update mechanism improperly trusts these image labels to determine which system services to restart. If a user runs the malicious container and auto-update processes it, arbitrary system services are restarted with the user's privileges, potentially allowing an attacker to shut down the host system when Podman runs with administrative privileges.

Patch / fix

  • podman-container-tools podman 5.8.10, 6.2.0

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-121885 updated cvss 6.5

podman: Untrusted image labels allow auto-update to restart arbitrary systemd units

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 podman
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Hardened Images podman
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 podman, podman-tests, podman-docker, podman-remote, podman-gvproxy, podman-plugins, +2 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
yesterday

Exploit prediction

0.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 32% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • podman-container-tools podman
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
  • Red Hat Red Hat Hardened Images
  • Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-807 Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of podman-container-tools/podman published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.