Vulnerability · Published Jun 26, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-55686Podman: WORKDIR symlink traversal vulnerability
Medium 5.3
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in podman from podman-container-tools. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 35% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. From 3.0.0 until 5.7.1, running a malicious container image where the WORKDIR path contains a symlink can create a directory or modify ownership on the host filesystem. Modified ownership is less likely to happen as that requires help from an untrusted/malicious process that mutates the host filesystem tree during dereferencing of the WORKDIR path, to trigger a race condition. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.7.1.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:13 | podman | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55686 |
| Debian:14 | podman | 5.8.1+ds1-2 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55686 |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman | no fix listed | GO-2026-5568 |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v2 | no fix listed | GO-2026-5568 |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v3 | no fix listed | GO-2026-5568 |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v3 | no fix listed | GHSA-q6r4-3wmg-fwcq |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v4 | no fix listed | GHSA-q6r4-3wmg-fwcq |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v4 | no fix listed | GO-2026-5568 |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v5 | 5.7.1 | GHSA-q6r4-3wmg-fwcq |
| Go | github.com/containers/podman/v5 | 5.7.1 | GO-2026-5568 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | podman | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-55686 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | podman | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-55686 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | podman | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-55686 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| podman-container-tools | podman | >= 3.0.0, < 5.7.1 |
Weakness: CWE-61 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N