A flaw in bootc and ostree allows already‑staged deployments to be finalized without revalidating the container image against the current signature policy. Unsigned OS content that was staged when a permissive policy was in place can therefore remain bootable after the policy is hardened to reject unsigned images. This flaw can lead to a complete compromise of the host after a reboot.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9, 10; Red Hat Hardened Images; Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 are all affected. No specific version ranges are listed in the CNA data, so any installation of these products that has not applied the forthcoming update may be vulnerable.

The CVSS score of 7.4 indicates a high severity. EPSS information is not available, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog, so the current exploitation probability is uncertain but not negligible. The likely attack vector is a privileged or local attacker who can create or modify a staged deployment while the policy is permissive. The attacker would then re‑finalize or reboot the system after the policy has been hardened, causing the signed checks to be bypassed and allowing full host compromise.