High severity · published Nov 6, 2025
CVE-2025-52881
runc: LSM labels can be bypassed with malicious config using dummy procfs files
7.5
CVSS
0.8%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. In versions 1.2.7, 1.3.2 and 1.4.0-rc.2, an attacker can trick runc into misdirecting writes to /proc to other procfs files through the use of a racing container with shared mounts (we have also verified this attack is possible to exploit using a standard Dockerfile with docker buildx build as that also permits triggering parallel execution of containers with custom shared mounts configured). This redirect could be through symbolic links in a tmpfs or theoretically other methods such as regular bind-mounts. While similar, the mitigation applied for the related CVE, CVE-2019-19921, was fairly limited and effectively only caused runc to verify that when LSM labels are written they are actually procfs files. This issue is fixed in versions 1.2.8, 1.3.3, and 1.4.0-rc.3.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.8% · higher than 56% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
RU
runc · opencontainers
<= 1.2.7, < 1.2.8; <= 1.3.2, < 1.3.3; <= 1.4.0-rc.2, < 1.4.0-rc.3 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-52881
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-52881
Patch
http://github.com/opencontainers/runc/commit/a41366e74080fa9f26a2cd3544e2801449697322
Patch
http://github.com/opencontainers/runc/commit/fdcc9d3cad2f85954a241ccb910a61aaa1ef47f3
Patch
https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/v1.4.0-rc.2/RELEASES.md
Patch
https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/commit/3f925525b44d247e390e529e772a0dc0c0bc3557
Patch
https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/commit/435cc81be6b79cdec73b4002c0dae549b2f6ae6d
Patch
https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/commit/44a0fcf685db051c80b8c269812bb177f5802c58
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