Description
A flaw was found in Podman. An attacker can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by supplying a container image containing crafted metadata labels. Podman's auto-update mechanism improperly trusts these image labels to determine which system services to restart. If a user runs the malicious container and auto-update processes it, arbitrary system services are restarted with the user's privileges, potentially allowing an attacker to shut down the host system when Podman runs with administrative privileges.
Published: 2026-11-10
Score: 6.5 Medium
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

No analysis available yet.

Remediation

Vendor Workaround

Do not use podman auto-update on untrusted containers or images. Before running an image, inspect its labels with podman image inspect --format '.Config.Labels' and verify that the io.containers.autoupdate and PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT labels are not set. For existing containers, inspect their labels and ensure that auto-update labels are configured correctly and only present on containers intended to use auto-update.

Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A flaw was found in Podman. An attacker can trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) by supplying a container image containing crafted metadata labels. Podman's auto-update mechanism improperly trusts these image labels to determine which system services to restart. If a user runs the malicious container and auto-update processes it, arbitrary system services are restarted with the user's privileges, potentially allowing an attacker to shut down the host system when Podman runs with administrative privileges.
Title Podman: untrusted image labels allow auto-update to restart arbitrary systemd units
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Redhat hummingbird
Redhat openshift
Weaknesses CWE-807
CPEs cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:10
cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
cpe:/a:redhat:hummingbird:1
cpe:/a:redhat:openshift:4
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat enterprise Linux
Redhat hummingbird
Redhat openshift
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}


Subscriptions

Redhat Enterprise Linux Hummingbird Openshift
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-11-10T15:18:45.306Z

Reserved: 2026-11-04T11:15:46.453Z

Link: CVE-2026-121885

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2026-11-10T15:17:15.880

Modified: 2026-11-10T15:17:15.997

Link: CVE-2026-121885

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses
  • CWE-807

    Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision