CRI-O Privilege Escalation via Malicious Checkpoint Restore (before 1.34)
CVE-2026-92574 Published on September 21, 2026

Cri-o: cri-o checkpoint restore bypasses destination security context
A vulnerability in CRI-O checkpoint restore allows a user who can create a pod from a malicious checkpointed container to bypass the destination Kubernetes security context. The restored process may retain credentials, Linux capabilities, no_new_privs, and seccomp state from the checkpoint instead of enforcing the destination configuration. This can allow execution with elevated privileges across the container security boundary. Affected upstream supported versions are CRI-O 1.34 and later. Downstream Red Hat products are affected from OCP 4.17 onward. Fixes have been applied to supported branches but are not yet released. Exploitation requires permission to create a pod from a malicious checkpoint image and checkpoint restore functionality to be available.

NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-92574 is exploitable with network access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
LOW
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
HIGH
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Timeline

Reported to Red Hat.

Made public. 5 days later.

Weakness Type

Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

The software performs an operation at a privilege level that is higher than the minimum level required, which creates new weaknesses or amplifies the consequences of other weaknesses.


Products Associated with CVE-2026-92574

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Red Hat Confidential Compute Attestation
 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
 
Red Hat Openshift
 

Affected Versions

Red Hat Confidential Compute Attestation: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4: