youki-dev/youki · Security

youki container escape via "masked path" abuse due to mount race conditions

GHSA ID
GHSA-4g74-7cff-xcv8
CVE ID
CVE-2025-62161
Severity
high
Published
Updated
CVSS
10 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v3
10 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4
7.3 · CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

Description

Impact

youki utilizes bind mounting the container's /dev/null as a file mask. When performing this operation, the initial validation of the source /dev/null was insufficient. Specifically, we initially failed to verify whether /dev/null was genuinely present. However, we did perform validation to ensure that the /dev/null path existed within the container, including checking for symbolic links. Additionally, there was a vulnerability in the timing between validation and the actual mount operation.

As a result, by replacing /dev/null with a symbolic link, we can bind-mount arbitrary files from the host system.

This is a different project, but the core logic is similar to the CVE in runc. Issues were identified in runc, and verification was also conducted in youki to confirm the problems. https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/security/advisories/GHSA-9493-h29p-rfm2

Credits

Thanks to Lei Wang (@ssst0n3 from Huawei) for finding and reporting the original runc's vulnerability (Attack 1), and Li Fubang (@lifubang from acmcoder.com, CIIC) for discovering another attack vector in runc (Attack 2) based on @ssst0n3's initial findings.

Also, @cyphar helped youki in finding the problem.

CWEs

References