CVE-2021-43816Improper Preservation of Permissions in containerd
- 8.0HighCVSS base score
- 1.8%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 21% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
containerd is an open source container runtime. On installations using SELinux, such as EL8 (CentOS, RHEL), Fedora, or SUSE MicroOS, with containerd since v1.5.0-beta.0 as the backing container runtime interface (CRI), an unprivileged pod scheduled to the node may bind mount, via hostPath volume, any privileged, regular file on disk for complete read/write access (sans delete). Such is achieved by placing the in-container location of the hostPath volume mount at either `/etc/hosts`, `/etc/hostname`, or `/etc/resolv.conf`. These locations are being relabeled indiscriminately to match the container process-label which effectively elevates permissions for savvy containers that would not normally be able to access privileged host files. This issue has been resolved in version 1.5.9. Users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 50 days later
· 50 days later
Published
- 3 years later
· 3 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.0 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Critical9.1 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.8% · top 21% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.0.
Affected products
- affected >= 1.5.0, < 1.5.9
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/containerd/containerdGHSA-mvff-h3cj-wj9c (opens in a new tab)
References
References6
- https://github.com/containerd/containerd/security/advisories/GHSA-mvff-h3cj-wj9c (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://github.com/containerd/containerd/issues/6194 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/a731039238c62be081eb8c31525b988415745eea (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://github.com/dweomer/containerd/commit/f7f08f0e34fb97392b0d382e58916d6865100299 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- FEDORA-2022-f668c3d70d (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_FEDORAx_transferred
- FEDORA-2022-a0b2a4d594 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_FEDORAx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2022-0652 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-mvff-h3cj-wj9c (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2021-43816)Record last updated .