Kata Containers, a lightweight virtual machine implementation for containers, contains a flaw in its use of Cloud Hypervisor that allows a user of a container to modify the filesystem used by the guest micro VM. This privilege escalation can be abused to execute arbitrary code with root privileges inside the guest VM, giving full control over that virtual machine.

All versions of Kata Containers older than 3.27.0 are affected. Based on the description, it is inferred that the vulnerability applies to all host architectures. The vulnerability is tied to the Cloud Hypervisor component and does not impact the security of the host system or other containers and VMs running on the same host.

The CVSS score of 9.4 designates this flaw as critical, while the EPSS score of less than 1% indicates a very low current exploitation probability. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. An attacker would need to run within the compromised container; the attack does not extend to the host or other isolated workloads, but it allows full control of the guest VM’s environment.