Bug 2452054 (CVE-2026-33945)

Summary: CVE-2026-33945 incus: Incus: Privilege escalation and denial of service via path traversal in systemd credential configuration
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: urgent    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in Incus, a system container and virtual machine manager. An attacker with the ability to configure Incus instances can exploit a path traversal vulnerability by manipulating the `systemd.credential` configuration key. This allows the attacker to write to arbitrary files as the root user, leading to both privilege escalation and denial of service within the system.
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Bug Depends On: 2452106    
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-03-27 00:02:03 UTC 
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Incus instances have an option to provide credentials to systemd in the guest. For containers, this is handled through a shared directory. Prior to version 6.23.0, an attacker can set a configuration key named something like `systemd.credential.../../../../../../root/.bashrc` to cause Incus to write outside of the `credentials` directory associated with the container. This makes use of the fact that the Incus syntax for such credentials is `systemd.credential.XYZ` where `XYZ` can itself contain more periods. While it's not possible to read any data this way, it's possible to write to arbitrary files as root, enabling both privilege escalation and denial of service attacks. Version 6.23.0 fixes the issue.