Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. In versions 6.20.0 and below, a user with the ability to launch a container with a custom YAML configuration (e.g a member of the ‘incus’ group) can create an environment variable containing newlines, which can be used to add additional configuration items in the container’s lxc.conf due to newline injection. This can allow adding arbitrary lifecycle hooks, ultimately resulting in arbitrary command execution on the host. Exploiting this issue on IncusOS requires a slight modification of the payload to change to a different writable directory for the validation step (e.g /tmp). This can be confirmed with a second container with /tmp mounted from the host (A privileged action for validation only). A fix is planned for versions 6.0.6
and 6.21.0, but they have not been released at the time of publication.
Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-x6jc-phwx-hp32 Incus container environment configuration newline injection
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 16:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Lxc
Lxc incus
Vendors & Products Lxc
Lxc incus

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 23:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. In versions 6.20.0 and below, a user with the ability to launch a container with a custom YAML configuration (e.g a member of the ‘incus’ group) can create an environment variable containing newlines, which can be used to add additional configuration items in the container’s lxc.conf due to newline injection. This can allow adding arbitrary lifecycle hooks, ultimately resulting in arbitrary command execution on the host. Exploiting this issue on IncusOS requires a slight modification of the payload to change to a different writable directory for the validation step (e.g /tmp). This can be confirmed with a second container with /tmp mounted from the host (A privileged action for validation only). A fix is planned for versions 6.0.6 and 6.21.0, but they have not been released at the time of publication.
Title Incus container environment configuration newline injection
Weaknesses CWE-93
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-01-22T21:39:41.015Z

Reserved: 2026-01-19T14:49:06.312Z

Link: CVE-2026-23953

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-01-22T22:16:20.673

Modified: 2026-01-22T22:16:20.673

Link: CVE-2026-23953

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-01-23T10:27:09Z

Weaknesses