Improper Privilege Management and Execution with Unnecessary Privileges in Kata Containers

CVE-2020-2023 → View on GitHub ↗ View on CVE.org ↗ View on NVD ↗

Description

Kata Containers doesn't restrict containers from accessing the guest's root filesystem device. Malicious containers can exploit this to gain code execution on the guest and masquerade as the kata-agent. This issue affects Kata Containers 1.11 versions earlier than 1.11.1; Kata Containers 1.10 versions earlier than 1.10.5; and Kata Containers 1.9 and earlier versions.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
—
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2022-02-15 01:57:18 UTC
Updated
2023-02-01 05:05:32 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2021-05-13 19:41:22 UTC
NVD published
2020-06-10

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
1.76% 82.53%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
9.8 3.1 —
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

Type Value
GHSA GHSA-6978-vg2j-cc9q ↗
CVE CVE-2020-2023 ↗

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

Affected packages (6)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
go github.com/kata-containers/agent <= 1.9 1.9.1 —
go github.com/kata-containers/agent >= 1.10.0, < 1.10.5 1.10.5 —
go github.com/kata-containers/agent >= 1.11.0, < 1.11.1 1.11.1 —
go github.com/kata-containers/runtime <= 1.9 1.9.1 —
go github.com/kata-containers/runtime >= 1.10.0, < 1.10.5 1.10.5 —
go github.com/kata-containers/runtime >= 1.11.0, < 1.11.1 1.11.1 —

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence