Kata Container to Guest micro VM privilege escalation

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS 4.0

5.2 · CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H · score source

EPSS

• CVE-2026-24834: 0.24% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 15.72 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Summary An issue in Kata with Cloud Hypervisor allows a user of the container to modify the file system used by the Guest micro VM ultimately achieving arbitrary code execution as root in said VM. The current understinding is this doesn’t impact the security of the Host or of other containers / VMs running on that Host (note that arm64 QEMU lacks NVDIMM read-only support: It is believed that until the upstream QEMU gains this capability, a guest write could reach the image file). Details Linux virtio-pmem The virtio-pmem probe path always registers the region as a generic pagemap that supports asynchronous flushes, but it never marks the region as read-only. Only the NDREGIONPAGEMAP and NDREGIONASYNC bits are set before the region is created, so ndregion-ro always stays cleared and the block device is left writable. Later, pmemattachdisk() wires the region into the block layer with full read/write semantics – the block device operations call pmemdowrite() which performs cache-flushed…

Published by the source

19 Feb 2026, 15:25 UTC

Last modified by the source

28 Jul 2026, 01:48 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:27 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2026-24834

Advisory: Kata Container to Guest micro VM privilege escalation
IDs: CVE-2026-24834, GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2026-24834 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:27 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: Medium (CVSS 5.2)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime 0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime: affected < 0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b; fixed in 0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64 (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64 lists affected ranges: Go github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/src/runtime >=0 <0.0.0-20260219090056-6a672503973b)

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