Firecracker 0.23.0-1.16.1 Memory Remap Mishandling (priv esc)
CVE-2026-122192 Published on November 4, 2026
Guest access to Firecracker process memory after a failed memory discard
Improper handling of a failed memory remap in Firecracker versions 0.23.0 through 1.16.1 might allow a guest user with root privileges to read or modify Firecracker VMM process memory via balloon or virtio-mem discard requests on microVMs restored from a snapshot with the File memory backend, if the host fails to create the replacement mapping.
To remediate this issue, users should upgrade to Firecracker 1.16.2 or 1.17.0 and later.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-122192 is exploitable with local system access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is consided to have a high level of attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.
Weakness Types
Detection of Error Condition Without Action
The software detects a specific error, but takes no actions to handle the error.
What is a Dangling pointer Vulnerability?
The program dereferences a pointer that contains a location for memory that was previously valid, but is no longer valid. When a program releases memory, but it maintains a pointer to that memory, then the memory might be re-allocated at a later time. If the original pointer is accessed to read or write data, then this could cause the program to read or modify data that is in use by a different function or process. Depending on how the newly-allocated memory is used, this could lead to a denial of service, information exposure, or code execution.
CVE-2026-122192 has been classified to as a Dangling pointer vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-122192
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Affected Versions
AWS firecracker:- Version 0.23.0 and below 1.16.2 is affected.