CRI-O Env Variable Crash via Nil Envs Causes Go Runtime Panic
CVE-2026-17113 Published on August 24, 2026
Cri-o: cri-o: unvalidated image env var causes daemon crash
A flaw was found in CRI-O's container-creation environment-variable handling
(`mergeEnvs` in `server/utils.go`, consumed by `setupContainerEnvironmentAndWorkdir` in
`server/container_create.go`). When a `CreateContainer` request supplies a `nil` CRI
`Envs` field, CRI-O falls back to using the target OCI image's `config.Env` entries
unfiltered, in contrast to the normal merge path, which validates each entry for a
`key=value` form before use. An OCI image whose `config.Env` contains an entry with no
`=` character (e.g. a bare `NOEQUALS` string) causes CRI-O to split that entry into a
single-element slice and then index its second element, which is out of range. This
triggers an unrecovered Go runtime panic in the `crio` daemon process, crashing it and
terminating the container-runtime service for all workloads on the node until it is
restarted.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-17113 can be exploited with local system access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 36 days later.
Weakness Type
Improper Validation of Specified Type of Input
The product receives input that is expected to be of a certain type, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input is actually of the expected type.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-17113
Want to know whenever a new CVE is published for Red Hat Openshift? stack.watch will email you.
