CVE-2025-11395: 
Podman vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2025-11395 is an arbitrary file write vulnerability in Podman affecting the podman load command. A flaw in how Podman processes tar archives allows an attacker who can supply a crafted OCI/tar archive to create or overwrite files on the host machine with the privileges of the user running Podman. Affected products include Podman, Buildah, Skopeo, Red Hat Container Core OS (RHCOS), and related Red Hat container tooling across RHEL 8 and RHEL 9. The vulnerability was disclosed on September 15, 2026, and was reported by researcher XeR. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.5 (Medium) (Red Hat CVE, GitHub Advisory).

The root cause is classified as CWE-277 (Insecure Inherited Permissions), where Podman fails to properly validate or sanitize file paths within a crafted tar archive before extracting them during the podman load operation. This is a path traversal-style arbitrary file write: a malicious archive can contain entries with specially crafted paths (e.g., using ../ sequences or absolute paths) that cause files to be written outside the intended container image storage directory, inheriting the permissions of the invoking Podman process. Exploitation requires the attacker to control the tar archive passed to podman load, which is most relevant in environments where untrusted OCI archives are routinely processed (Red Hat CVE, GitHub Advisory).

Successful exploitation allows an authenticated local or adjacent-network attacker to create or overwrite arbitrary files on the host system with the privileges of the user running Podman. This can lead to privilege escalation, persistence (e.g., overwriting cron jobs, SSH authorized keys, or sudo configuration), or disruption of host services depending on the targeted files. The confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts are each rated Low in the CVSS scoring, reflecting that the scope is limited to the Podman process owner's privilege level rather than root (Red Hat CVE).

No public proof-of-concept exploit code is known to exist, and there is no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation at this time (GitHub Advisory). The EPSS score is approximately 0.19%, indicating a low near-term exploitation probability. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Exploitation requires the attacker to have low-level privileges and the ability to supply a crafted archive to the podman load command, limiting the attack surface primarily to environments processing untrusted OCI images (Red Hat CVE).

1. Obtain access: Gain low-privileged access to a system where Podman is installed and the target user routinely runs podman load with externally sourced archives.
2. Craft malicious tar archive: Create a tar archive containing file entries with path traversal sequences (e.g., ../../etc/cron.d/backdoor or ../../home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys) as filenames, embedding a malicious payload as the file content.
3. Package as OCI archive: Wrap the crafted tar archive in a valid OCI image format (e.g., with a minimal manifest.json and config.json) so it is accepted by podman load.
4. Deliver the archive: Supply the crafted archive to the target user or system via a shared file system, network share, CI/CD pipeline artifact, or social engineering.
5. Trigger extraction: Cause the victim user to execute podman load -i malicious.tar, which extracts the archive and writes attacker-controlled files to host paths outside the container storage directory, with the privileges of the invoking user.
6. Achieve objective: Depending on the files overwritten (e.g., cron jobs, SSH keys, sudo rules), escalate privileges or establish persistence on the host (Red Hat CVE, GitHub Advisory).

• File System: Unexpected or newly created files in sensitive host directories (e.g., /etc/cron.d/, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, /etc/sudoers.d/) with timestamps correlating to podman load execution; files owned by the Podman-invoking user in unusual locations.
• Logs: System logs (e.g., /var/log/audit/audit.log on SELinux-enabled systems) showing file creation events outside /var/lib/containers/ or the configured container storage path during or immediately after podman load invocations; podman process writing to unexpected filesystem paths.
• Process: podman process spawning with a tar archive argument pointing to an externally sourced or untrusted file; unexpected cron job execution or SSH login events shortly after podman load runs.

Red Hat has released patched packages addressing this vulnerability: buildah 2:1.43.3-2.el9_8 (via RHSA-2026:70640) and skopeo 2:1.22.2-8.el9_8 (via RHSA-2026:70641) for RHEL 9. Users should update to these patched versions as the primary remediation. Red Hat notes that no configuration-based mitigation meeting their deployment criteria is available. As an interim measure, restrict the podman load command to trusted users only and avoid loading OCI archives from untrusted or unverified sources. Implementing file integrity monitoring on critical host directories can help detect unauthorized modifications (Red Hat RHSA-2026:70640, Red Hat RHSA-2026:70641, Red Hat CVE).

Red Hat acknowledged the vulnerability and credited researcher XeR for the discovery. Red Hat Product Security classified the advisory impact as Important for the associated buildah and skopeo package updates. No significant broader community or social media discussion has been identified beyond standard vulnerability tracking and errata publication (Red Hat CVE).