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GHSA-9m95-8hx6-7p9v

MediumCVSS 5.5 / 10
Published Feb 15, 2022·Last modified Mar 13, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

umoci 0.4.6 and earlier can be tricked into modifying host files by creating a malicious layer that has a symlink with the name "." (or "/"). Because umoci deletes inodes if they change types, this results in the rootfs directory being replaced with an attacker-controlled symlink. Subsequent image layers will then be applied on top of the target of the symlink (which could be any directory on the host filesystem the user running umoci has access to).

While umoci does have defences against symlink-based attacks, they are all implemented by resolving things relative to the rootfs directory -- if the rootfs itself is a symlink, umoci resolves it first.

This vulnerability affects both "umoci unpack" and "umoci raw unpack".

Patches

This issue has been patched in umoci 0.4.7, see the references section for the specific commit which fixed this vulnerability.

Workarounds

Note that if you use umoci as an unprivileged user (using the --rootless flag) then umoci will not be able to overwrite any files that your user doesn't have access to. Other possible mitigations are to run umoci under an LSM profile such as AppArmor or SELinux to restrict the level of access it has outside of container image directories.

References

Credits

Thanks to Robin Peraglie from Cure53 for discovering and reporting this vulnerability.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory

Risk Scores
Base Score
5.5

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data.

Threat Intelligence
5.1

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
0.34%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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