Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-43816

HighPublic PoC

Published: 05 January 2022

Published
05 January 2022
Modified
21 November 2024
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 8.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0015 34.9th percentile
Risk Priority 16 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-43816 is a high-severity Improper Preservation of Permissions (CWE-281) vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Containerd. Its CVSS base score is 8.0 (High).

Operationally, ranked at the 34.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

containerd is an open source container runtime. On installations using SELinux, such as EL8 (CentOS, RHEL), Fedora, or SUSE MicroOS, with containerd since v1.5.0-beta.0 as the backing container runtime interface (CRI), an unprivileged pod scheduled to the node may bind…

more

mount, via hostPath volume, any privileged, regular file on disk for complete read/write access (sans delete). Such is achieved by placing the in-container location of the hostPath volume mount at either `/etc/hosts`, `/etc/hostname`, or `/etc/resolv.conf`. These locations are being relabeled indiscriminately to match the container process-label which effectively elevates permissions for savvy containers that would not normally be able to access privileged host files. This issue has been resolved in version 1.5.9. Users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

linuxfoundation
containerd
1.5.0 · 1.5.1 — 1.5.9
fedoraproject
fedora
34, 35

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-281

Forces removal or modification of permissions no longer required after reassignment, preventing improper preservation of old access rights.

References