Red Hat Enterprise Linux Auto-Update Mechanism denial of service

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Hardened Images and OpenShift Container Platform. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component Auto-Update Mechanism. This manipulation causes denial of service. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-121885. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. There is no exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Hardened Images and OpenShift Container Platform (the affected version is unknown) and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code of the component Auto-Update Mechanism. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a denial of service vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-404. The product does not release or incorrectly releases a resource before it is made available for re-use. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

A flaw was found in Podman. An attacker can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by supplying a container image containing crafted metadata labels. Podman's auto-update mechanism improperly trusts these image labels to determine which system services to restart. If a user runs the malicious container and auto-update processes it, arbitrary system services are restarted with the user's privileges, potentially allowing an attacker to shut down the host system when Podman runs with administrative privileges.

It is possible to read the advisory at access.redhat.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-121885 since 11/04/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 11/10/2026). The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1499 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Red Hat

Name

• Enterprise Linux
• Hardened Images
• OpenShift Container Platform

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.redhat.com/

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