podman-container-tools podman up to 5.7.0 symlink

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in podman-container-tools podman up to 5.7.0. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality. The manipulation results in symlink. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-55686. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. No exploit is available. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in podman-container-tools podman up to 5.7.0. Affected is an unknown function. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a symlink vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-61. The product, when opening a file or directory, does not sufficiently account for when the file is a symbolic link that resolves to a target outside of the intended control sphere. This could allow an attacker to cause the product to operate on unauthorized files. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. From 3.0.0 until 5.7.1, running a malicious container image where the WORKDIR path contains a symlink can create a directory or modify ownership on the host filesystem. Modified ownership is less likely to happen as that requires help from an untrusted/malicious process that mutates the host filesystem tree during dereferencing of the WORKDIR path, to trigger a race condition. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.7.1.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-55686 since 06/17/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. The exploitation doesn't require any form of authentication. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 323663 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-55686), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 5.7.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (323663). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Virtualization Software

Vendor

• podman-container-tools

Name

• podman

Version

• 5.0
• 5.1
• 5.2
• 5.3
• 5.4
• 5.5
• 5.6
• 5.7.0

Website

• Product: https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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