CVE-2026-53495
MediumCVSS 6.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs
Summary
Prior to 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, and 2.3.5, containerd on Linux with the CRI plugin enabled can indefinitely block the drainExecSyncIO goroutine in internal/cri/server/container_execsync.go when CRI ExecSync is used by exec probes or lifecycle hooks that launch long-lived background child processes retaining standard input and output pipes. The input and output drain phase has no default timeout and did not stop when the request context was canceled.
Risk Assessment
Repeated ExecSync invocations can accumulate blocked goroutines and host memory, potentially causing the OOM killer to terminate containerd and leaving the container runtime unavailable until restart. Deployments not using containerd's CRI implementation and containers not running on Linux are not affected.
Recommendation
Upgrade containerd to versions 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, or 2.3.5. Until patched, monitor memory usage and blocked goroutines in CRI-enabled environments.
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-2026-53493Medium
A vulnerability in containerd (open-source container runtime) prior to versions 1.7.36, 2.0.13, 2.2.9, 2.3.6, and 2.4.1. A crafted OCI index graph can force very high CPU/memory usage during PullImage (before container start), causing long ContainerCreating stalls and, at larger sizes, node/runtime instability.
- 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).
- CVE-2026-53488High
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.
Original NVD description (English source)
containerd is an open-source container runtime. Prior to 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, and 2.3.5, containerd on Linux with the CRI plugin enabled can indefinitely block the drainExecSyncIO goroutine in internal/cri/server/container_execsync.go when CRI ExecSync is used by exec probes or lifecycle hooks that launch long-lived background child processes retaining standard input and output pipes. The input and output drain phase has no default timeout and did not stop when the request context was canceled, so repeated ExecSync invocations can accumulate blocked goroutines and host memory. The resulting resource exhaustion can cause the OOM killer to terminate containerd, leaving the container runtime unavailable until restart. Deployments not using containerd's CRI implementation and containers not running on Linux are not affected. This issue is fixed in versions 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, and 2.3.5.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS