Bug 2500986

Summary: CVE-2026-15809 cri-o1.31: Fix Bypass for CVE-2022-4318 — /etc/passwd Injection via HOME env [fedora-all]
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: gkamathe
Component: cri-o1.31Assignee: Brad Smith <bradley.g.smith>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: rawhideCC: bradley.g.smith, go-sig
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security, SecurityTracking
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard: {"flaws": ["61d36888-a402-47e5-bd9c-bb433f8b40c4"]}
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 2500846    

Description gkamathe 2026-07-15 15:21:09 UTC 
Disclaimer: Community trackers are created by Red Hat Product Security team on a best effort basis. Package maintainers are required to ascertain if the flaw indeed affects their package, before starting the update process.

The fix for CVE-2022-4318 in CRI-O is incorrect and has been bypassable since it was introduced on December 14, 2022. The check in server/container_create.go uses a Go raw string literal (`\n`) instead of an interpreted string literal ("\n"), causing it to search for the literal two-character sequence backslash-n (0x5c 0x6e) rather than an actual newline character (0x0a).

An attacker who can set environment variables on a container (via the CRI CreateContainer request) can supply a real newline character in the HOME environment variable, bypassing the check entirely. The unsanitized value is
then passed to utils.GeneratePasswd, which uses fmt.Sprintf to construct the container's /etc/passwd content, allowing arbitrary line injection.