High severity · published Feb 19, 2026
CVE-2026-24834
Kata Container to Guest micro VM privilege escalation
8.8
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Kata Containers is an open source project focusing on a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 3.27.0, an issue in Kata with Cloud Hypervisor allows a user of the container to modify the file system used by the Guest micro VM ultimately achieving arbitrary code execution as root in said VM. The current understanding is this doesn’t impact the security of the Host or of other containers / VMs running on that Host (note that arm64 QEMU lacks NVDIMM read-only support: It is believed that until the upstream QEMU gains this capability, a guest write could reach the image file). Version 3.27.0 patches the issue.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 16% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
KA
kata-containers · kata-containers
< 3.27.0 · source: vendor
KC
Kata Containers · Katacontainers
before 3.27.0 · source: NVD
RH
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · Red Hat
All versions, or not specified · source: CISA
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-24834
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-24834
Patch
https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/commit/6a672503973bf7c687053e459bfff8a9652e16bf
Product
https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/releases/tag/3.27.0
Exploit
https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/security/advisories/GHSA-wwj6-vghv-5p64
access.redhat.com
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-24834
bugzilla.redhat.com
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2441025
security.access.redhat.com
https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-24834.json
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