CVE-2023-38496 - CVE House
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Status published Medium CVE-2023-38496

Apptainer's ineffective privileges drop when requesting container network

Vulnerability Description

Apptainer is an open source container platform. Version 1.2.0-rc.2 introduced an ineffective privilege drop when requesting container network setup, therefore subsequent functions are called with root privileges, the attack surface is rather limited for users but an attacker could possibly craft a starter config to delete any directory on the host filesystems. A security fix has been included in Apptainer 1.2.1. There is no known workaround outside of upgrading to Apptainer 1.2.1.

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

apptainer
Vulnerable Versions:
>= 1.2.0-rc.2, < 1.2.1

Timeline

Official Publish: July 25th, 2023
Last Modified: October 10th, 2024
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

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

Weaknesses (CWE)