Symlink Following Affecting podman package, versions <6.0.0-r3


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on default assessment until relevant scores are available.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.22% (13th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-CHAINGUARDLATEST-PODMAN-17723804
  • published30 Jun 2026
  • disclosed1 Jul 2026

Introduced: 30 Jun 2026

NewCVE-2026-41579  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-61  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Chainguard podman to version 6.0.0-r3 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream podman package and not the podman package as distributed by Chainguard. See How to fix? for Chainguard relevant fixed versions and status.

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. In versions prior to 1.3.6, 1.4.0-rc.1, 1.4.0-rc.12, 1.5.0-rc.1, and 1.5.0-rc.1, when setting up the container rootfs, setupPtmx and setupDevSymlinks call os.Remove and os.Symlink with a filepath.Join string which allow an image with /dev as a symlink to trick runc into deleting files called ptmx on the host or creating a hardcoded set of symlinks with specific names and targets in an arbitrary pre-existing host directory. This issue is not exploitable under Docker, because Docker creates a top-level read-only layer that masks any malicious /dev symlink present in the container image — unlike some other Linux container tooling, whose higher-level runtimes built on runc remain exposed to exploitation via a malicious image. This issue has been fixed in versions 1.3.6, 1.4.3 and 1.5.0.