Red Hat Enterprise Linux/OpenShift Container Platform systemd-gpt-auto-generator privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift Container Platform. It has been classified as problematic. This affects an unknown part of the component systemd-gpt-auto-generator. The manipulation leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-121876. Local access is required to approach this attack. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift Container Platform (unknown version). It has been rated as problematic. This issue affects an unknown code block of the component systemd-gpt-auto-generator. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

A flaw was found in the interaction between systemd-gpt-auto-generator and confidential computing guest VM images in OpenShift Sandboxed Containers (confidential peer pods). systemd-gpt-auto-generator automatically discovers and mounts GPT partitions by type GUID at boot with no user confirmation. In the confidential computing threat model, where the host/hypervisor is the adversary, a malicious host can inject partitions into the guest's virtual disk. Most critically, injecting a swap partition causes the guest kernel to page out TEE-encrypted memory to a host-controlled block device, breaking the confidentiality guarantee of the hardware TEE (AMD SEV-SNP, Intel TDX). The PodVM images use a GPT-partitioned disk with dm-verity on the root partition. However, the roothash= kernel parameter only disables root auto-discovery — non-root partitions (swap, /home, /var, /srv, /var/tmp) are still auto-discovered and mounted. The generator is shipped unmasked in the RHEL systemd-udev subpackage, and no kernel command line parameter in the measured UKI addon disables it. Additionally, the PodVM measurement script captures PCRs 3, 9, 11, and 12, but not PCR 5 (GPT partition table), so partition table modifications are not detected by remote attestation.

It is possible to read the advisory at access.redhat.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-121876 since 11/04/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. Attacking locally is a requirement. Additional levels of successful authentication are required for exploitation. 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 11/12/2026). The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1068 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
• OpenShift Container Platform

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.redhat.com/

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