Bug 2502701 (CVE-2026-16254)

Summary: CVE-2026-16254 claircore: claircore: Denial of service via out-of-bounds slice in claircore's apk installed-database parser
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: aruklets, doconnor
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in claircore's apk package scanner. Malformed package-database data in a container layer can cause an out-of-bounds access that panics the scanner. If that panic is not recovered, the Clair indexer process can crash, leading to a denial of service.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-20 07:59:17 UTC 
A denial-of-service issue was reported in claircore (used by Clair, including with Quay). When indexing certain container image layers, the apk package scanner can panic on malformed package-database content. That panic is not handled on the indexing path, so it can terminate the indexer process. An attacker who can get a crafted image layer indexed may trigger this condition.
Comment 1 Yadnyawalk Tale 2026-07-20 08:09:35 UTC 
CVSS Justification:

A:H -> A:L 

A:H fits a long-lived single indexer process that dies for everyone until manually recovered.
A:L fits typical Quay/Clair on OpenShift/k8s: pod dies, kubelet restarts it, impact is a short indexing blip / log noise, not lasting outage - unless someone can crash-loop it continuously (still usually scored A:L when recovery is automatic).