CVE-2024-21626 HIGH

CVE-2024-21626: runc container breakout through process.cwd trickery and leaked fds

Vendor Opencontainers
Product runc
Weakness CWE-403
Published January 31, 2024
Last update June 30, 2026

CVSS base score

8.6/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction Required
Confidentiality High
Integrity High

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI specification. In runc 1.1.11 and earlier, due to an internal file descriptor leak, an attacker could cause a newly-spawned container process (from runc exec) to have a working directory in the host filesystem namespace, allowing for a container escape by giving access to the host filesystem ("attack 2"). The same attack could be used by a malicious image to allow a container process to gain access to the host filesystem through runc run ("attack 1"). Variants of attacks 1 and 2 could be also be used to overwrite semi-arbitrary host binaries, allowing for complete container escapes ("attack 3a" and "attack 3b"). runc 1.1.12 includes patches for this issue.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

January 31, 2024 CVE published
June 30, 2026 Record updated