CVE-2026-33481
Anchore Syft ≤ 1.42.3
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:LSummary
CVE-2026-33481 is a medium-severity Improper Cleanup on Thrown Exception (CWE-460) vulnerability in Anchore Syft. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked at the 34th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SC-24 (Fail in Known State) and SI-17 (Fail-safe Procedures) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-16279
Vulnerability Data
Syft is a a CLI tool and Go library for generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) from container images and filesystems. Syft versions before v1.42.3 would not properly cleanup temporary storage if the temporary storage was exhausted during a…
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scan. When scanning archives Syft will unpack those archives into temporary storage then inspect the unpacked contents. Under normal operation Syft will remove the temporary data it writes after completing a scan. This vulnerability would affect users of Syft that were scanning content that could cause Syft to fill the temporary storage that would then cause Syft to raise an error and exit. When the error is triggered Syft would exit without properly removing the temporary files in use. In our testing this was most easily reproduced by scanning very large artifacts or highly compressed artifacts such as a zipbomb. Because Syft would not clean up its temporary files, the result would be filling temporary file storage preventing future runs of Syft or other system utilities that rely on temporary storage being available. The patch has been released in v1.42.3. Syft now cleans up temporary files when an error condition is encountered. There are no workarounds for this vulnerability in Syft. Users that find their temporary storage depleted can manually remove the temporary files.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
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Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Requires the system to fail to a known state on indicated failures, directly forcing proper state cleanup instead of leaving inconsistent state after an exception.
Mandates explicit fail-safe procedures on failures, which structurally enforces cleanup actions that the weakness omits.
Requires application of security engineering principles (e.g., fail-safe, complete mediation) during design that would eliminate improper exception cleanup.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices directly enforce proper exception handling and resource cleanup.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect missing cleanup paths, thereby mitigating the weakness before deployment.
Secure SDLC mandates exception-handling and cleanup practices that reduce improper state after thrown exceptions.
Application security requirements can specify robust exception handling and resource-release rules.
Secure architecture principles include designing for safe failure and guaranteed cleanup on exceptions.
Secure coding standards directly require proper resource release and state restoration after exceptions.