CVE-2026-17113
Description
A flaw was found in CRI-O's container-creation environment-variable handling
(mergeEnvs in server/utils.go, consumed by setupContainerEnvironmentAndWorkdir in
server/container_create.go). When a CreateContainer request supplies a nil CRI
Envs field, CRI-O falls back to using the target OCI image's config.Env entries
unfiltered, in contrast to the normal merge path, which validates each entry for a
key=value form before use. An OCI image whose config.Env contains an entry with no
= character (e.g. a bare NOEQUALS string) causes CRI-O to split that entry into a
single-element slice and then index its second element, which is out of range. This
triggers an unrecovered Go runtime panic in the crio daemon process, crashing it and
terminating the container-runtime service for all workloads on the node until it is
restarted.
Statement
A flaw was found in CRI-O, a container runtime. Under a specific internal condition, CRI-O skips validating whether a container image's environment variable entries are properly formatted before using them. If an image contains a malformed environment variable, CRI-O crashes while processing it.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 6 | N/A | 6 |
| Attack Vector | Local | N/A | Local |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | High | N/A | High |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Changed | N/A | Changed |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | None |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Other
Technical Impact: Varies by Context
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Arpit Jain for reporting this issue.
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