High severity · published Mar 26, 2026
CVE-2026-33711
Incus vulnerable to local privilege escalation through VM screenshot path
7.8
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Incus provides an API to retrieve VM screenshots. That API relies on the use of a temporary file for QEMU to write the screenshot to which is then picked up and sent to the user prior to deletion. As versions prior to 6.23.0 use predictable paths under /tmp for this, an attacker with local access to the system can abuse this mechanism by creating their own symlinks ahead of time. On the vast majority of Linux systems, this will result in a "Permission denied" error when requesting a screenshot. That's because the Linux kernel has a security feature designed to block such attacks, `protected_symlinks`. On the rare systems with this purposefully disabled, it's then possible to trick Incus intro truncating and altering the mode and permissions of arbitrary files on the filesystem, leading to a potential denial of service or possible local privilege escalation. Version 6.23.0 fixes the issue.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 30% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
IN
incus · lxc
< 6.23.0 · source: vendor, NVD
Affected product
IN
incus
lxc
More from incus
9.9
CVE-2026-115377
Incus before 6.0.7, 6.1.0 before 7.0.2, and 7.1.0 before 7.5.0 Arbitrary File Write via Symlink in Migration Stream
9.9
CVE-2026-115375
Incus 7.0.0 before 7.0.2 and 7.1.0 before 7.5.0 Path Traversal via Instance Backup Dependent Volumes
9.9
CVE-2026-63343
Arbitrary File Read/Write: metadata.yaml symlink in image allows host filesystem access as root
9.9
CVE-2026-63125
Incus vulnerable to root RCE via image backup.yaml symlink
9.9
CVE-2026-62941
Incus: Cross-project instance copy bypasses target project restrictions via TOCTOU in config merge