containerd up to 2.3.1 CRI Plugin access control

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in containerd up to 1.7.32/2.0.9/2.1.8/2.2.4/2.3.1 and classified as critical. This affects an unknown part of the component CRI Plugin. Such manipulation leads to access control. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-53488. The attack can be launched remotely. No exploit exists. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in containerd up to 1.7.32/2.0.9/2.1.8/2.2.4/2.3.1. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is an unknown code of the component CRI Plugin. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a access control vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-284. The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

containerd is an open-source container runtime. In versions prior to 1.7.33, 2.3.2, 2.2.5, 2.1.9, and 2.0.10 the CRI plugin propagates labels from an image config (LABEL instruction in Dockerfile) to a container without validation. This may result in executing an arbitrary command on the host, via a plugin that consumes container labels for some operations. This issue has been fixed in versions 1.7.33, 2.3.2, 2.2.5, 2.1.9, and 2.0.10.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-53488. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1068.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 321802 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-53488), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 1.7.33, 2.0.10, 2.1.9, 2.2.5 or 2.3.2 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (321802), EUVD (EUVD-2026-40860) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-2009). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Google Cloud Platform

Productinfo

Type

• Virtualization Software

Name

• containerd

Version

• 1.7.0
• 1.7.1
• 1.7.2
• 1.7.3
• 1.7.4
• 1.7.5
• 1.7.6
• 1.7.7
• 1.7.8
• 1.7.9
• 1.7.10
• 1.7.11
• 1.7.12
• 1.7.13
• 1.7.14
• 1.7.15
• 1.7.16
• 1.7.17
• 1.7.18
• 1.7.19
• 1.7.20
• 1.7.21
• 1.7.22
• 1.7.23
• 1.7.24
• 1.7.25
• 1.7.26
• 1.7.27
• 1.7.28
• 1.7.29
• 1.7.30
• 1.7.31
• 1.7.32
• 2.0.0
• 2.0.1
• 2.0.2
• 2.0.3
• 2.0.4
• 2.0.5
• 2.0.6
• 2.0.7
• 2.0.8
• 2.0.9
• 2.1.0
• 2.1.1
• 2.1.2
• 2.1.3
• 2.1.4
• 2.1.5
• 2.1.6
• 2.1.7
• 2.1.8
• 2.2.0
• 2.2.1
• 2.2.2
• 2.2.3
• 2.2.4
• 2.3.0
• 2.3.1

Website

• Product: https://github.com/containerd/containerd/

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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