Bug 2500979 - CVE-2026-15809 cri-o: Fix Bypass for CVE-2022-4318 — /etc/passwd Injection via HOME env [fedora-all]
Summary: CVE-2026-15809 cri-o: Fix Bypass for CVE-2022-4318 — /etc/passwd Injection vi...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: cri-o
Version: 45
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Peter Hunt
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard: {"flaws": ["61d36888-a402-47e5-bd9c-b...
Depends On:
Blocks: CVE-2026-15809
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-07-15 15:20 UTC by gkamathe
Modified: 2026-08-17 15:20 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description gkamathe 2026-07-15 15:20:40 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.

Comment 1 Aoife Moloney 2026-08-17 15:20:31 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 45 development cycle.
Changing version to 45.


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