A flaw in LXD allows an attacker to read or modify any file on the host system by manipulating the metadata.yaml file in an image archive. The system fails to check whether metadata.yaml is a symbolic link, enabling a crafted symlink to point to arbitrary host paths. This leads to privilege escalation, allowing the attacker to compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the host. The weakness corresponds to CWE-59.

Canonical LXD is affected when the installed version is earlier than 4.0.12, 5.0.8, 5.12.6, or 6.10. All prior releases that do not address the metadata.yaml symlink check are vulnerable.

The CVSS score of 9.9 marks this issue as critical. Although the EPSS score is not available, the lack of a listing in CISA KEV suggests no current exploitation in the wild, but the severity remains high. The attack vector requires the ability to import or unpack an image archive into LXD, which can be performed by any user who has write access to LXD or by an attacker who can influence image content. Once the crafted image is processed, the attacker gains full host access as root. The vulnerability can be exploited with simple crafted image archives and does not require additional prerequisites beyond LXD image import privileges.