kata-containers Kata Containers up to 3.x mem-agent authorization

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as critical has been detected in kata-containers Kata Containers up to 3.x. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component mem-agent. Performing a manipulation results in authorization. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-64676. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in kata-containers Kata Containers up to 3.x. It has been classified as critical. This affects some unknown functionality of the component mem-agent. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a authorization vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-639. The system's authorization functionality does not prevent one user from gaining access to another user's data or record by modifying the key value identifying the data. This is going to have an impact on integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

Kata Containers is an open source implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 4.0.0, the kata-agent is vulnerable to an authorization bypass in confidential-guest memory management. In Confidential Containers (CoCo) deployments, the kata-agent enforces an OPA/Rego-based AgentPolicy that must authorize every ttRPC API call, forming the security boundary that prevents an untrusted host from directing the confidential guest. Two ttRPC methods introduced with the mem-agent feature are missing this authorization check, so an untrusted host can invoke them unconditionally regardless of the guest's policy configuration. When mem-agent is enabled (off by default), this lets the host tamper with in-guest memory management by forcing swap, aggressive eviction, or compaction, resulting in attacker-controlled availability and performance degradation of the confidential workload entirely outside the agent-policy boundary. The impact does not include memory disclosure or code execution, and severity is bounded by the precondition that mem-agent must be explicitly enabled. This issue is fixed in version 4.0.0.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-64676 since 07/20/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. No form of authentication is needed for exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

Upgrading to version 4.0.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Virtualization Software

Vendor

• kata-containers

Name

• Kata Containers

Version

• 3.x

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Discussion