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
- CWE-61 · UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
- CWE-363 · Race Condition Enabling Link Following
References
- https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/security/advisories/GHSA-9493-h29p-rfm2 ↗
- https://github.com/youki-dev/youki/security/advisories/GHSA-4g74-7cff-xcv8 ↗
- https://github.com/youki-dev/youki/commit/5886c91073b9be748bd8d5aed49c4a820548030a ↗
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-62161 ↗
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4g74-7cff-xcv8 ↗