CVE-2026-53488
HighCVSS 8.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk10th percentile - higher than 10% of all known CVEs
Summary
The CRI plugin in containerd prior to versions 1.7.33, 2.3.2, 2.2.5, 2.1.9, and 2.0.10 propagates labels from an image config (LABEL instruction in Dockerfile) to a container without validation. This may allow arbitrary command execution on the host via a plugin that consumes container labels for operations.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to achieve remote code execution on the host, leading to full system compromise and potential takeover of the container environment.
Recommendation
Immediately update containerd to version 1.7.33, 2.3.2, 2.2.5, 2.1.9, or 2.0.10 depending on the branch in use.
Other vulnerabilities in containerd
See all- CVE-2026-53492Critical
In containerd versions prior to 2.3.2, 2.2.5 and 2.1.9, the CRI implementation improperly trusts CDI annotations from untrusted checkpoint image metadata during container restoration. A user with pod creation permissions can bypass standard Kubernetes resource allocation and inject arbitrary devices or host mounts into the restored container.
- CVE-2026-50195Critical
A vulnerability in containerd prior to versions 2.3.2, 2.2.5 and 2.1.9 allows an attacker with pod creation permissions to poison the local image cache via a crafted checkpoint image. Missing validation of image references in the checkpoint import process enables assigning an arbitrary local tag to a malicious image.
- CVE-2026-53489Medium
A vulnerability in containerd allows reading arbitrary files on the host via kubectl logs. The bug occurs in the CRI plugin, which restores container.log from a checkpoint image without validating a symlinked path.
- CVE-2026-47262Medium
A vulnerability in containerd allows memory exhaustion via a maliciously crafted container image, causing an OOM kill of the containerd process and making the runtime API unavailable. Affected versions are prior to 1.7.33, 2.0.10, 2.1.9, 2.2.5, and 2.3.2.
- CVE-2026-46680High
In containerd prior to versions 1.7.32, 2.0.9, 2.2.4, and 2.3.1, containers with a numeric User directive that cannot be parsed as a 32-bit integer are incorrectly treated as a username. This allows bypassing the Kubernetes runAsNonRoot restriction if a crafted image maps this large numeric string to root in /etc/passwd, causing the container to run as root (UID 0).
Original NVD description (English source)
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.