containers podman up to 5.8.1 VM Image Parser stubber.go os command injection

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in containers podman up to 5.8.1. It has been classified as critical. The affected element is an unknown function of the file pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go of the component VM Image Parser. This manipulation causes os command injection. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-33414. The attack can only be executed locally. There is no exploit available. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in containers podman up to 5.8.1. It has been declared as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code block of the file pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go of the component VM Image Parser. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a os command injection vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-78. The product constructs all or part of an OS command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended OS command when it is sent to a downstream component. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. Versions 4.8.0 through 5.8.1 contain a command injection vulnerability in the HyperV machine backend in pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go, where the VM image path is inserted into a PowerShell double-quoted string without sanitization, allowing $() subexpression injection. Because PowerShell evaluates subexpressions inside double-quoted strings before executing the outer command, an attacker who can control the VM image path through a crafted machine name or image directory can execute arbitrary PowerShell commands with the privileges of the Podman process. On typical Windows installations this means SYSTEM-level code execution, and only Windows is affected as the code is exclusive to the HyperV backend. This issue has been patched in version 5.8.2.

The advisory is shared at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-33414 since 03/19/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. An attack has to be approached locally. Additional levels of successful authentication are needed for exploitation. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1202 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 5.8.2 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 571c842bd357ee626019ea97d030fb772fc654ed is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Virtualization Software

Vendor

• containers

Name

• podman

Version

• 5.8.0
• 5.8.1

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/containers/podman/

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Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

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