CVE-2023-25173 - CVE House
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Status published Medium CVE-2023-25173

containerd supplementary groups are not set up properly

Vulnerability Description

containerd is an open source container runtime. A bug was found in containerd prior to versions 1.6.18 and 1.5.18 where supplementary groups are not set up properly inside a container. If an attacker has direct access to a container and manipulates their supplementary group access, they may be able to use supplementary group access to bypass primary group restrictions in some cases, potentially gaining access to sensitive information or gaining the ability to execute code in that container. Downstream applications that use the containerd client library may be affected as well. This bug has been fixed in containerd v1.6.18 and v.1.5.18. Users should update to these versions and recreate containers to resolve this issue. Users who rely on a downstream application that uses containerd's client library should check that application for a separate advisory and instructions. As a workaround, ensure that the `"USER $USERNAME"` Dockerfile instruction is not used. Instead, set the container entrypoint to a value similar to `ENTRYPOINT ["su", "-", "user"]` to allow `su` to properly set up supplementary groups.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

containerd
Vulnerable Versions:
< 1.5.18, >= 1.6.0, < 1.6.18

Timeline

Official Publish: February 16th, 2023
Last Modified: March 10th, 2025
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

Weaknesses (CWE)