Medium severity · published May 7, 2026
CVE-2026-41684
Incus: Nil Dereferences on Restore via Malformed YAML
6.5
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Prior to version 7.0.0, backup.GetInfo() trusts the inline backup/index.yaml config when present and only falls back to parsing the legacy backup/container/backup.yaml file if result.Config == nil. As a result, an archive can carry a valid inline config that passes the initial import preflight while also carrying a malformed legacy backup/container/backup.yaml file that is reparsed later from the restored file system. ParseConfigYamlFile() accepts YAML documents with no container section, and multiple downstream consumers then dereference. Container without checking for nil. Confirmed examples in the instance restore and import flow include backup.UpdateInstanceConfig() and internalImportFromBackup(). An authenticated user with permission to import instance backups may be able to crash the Incus daemon with a crafted backup archive whose inline backup/index.yaml is valid but whose extracted legacy backup.yaml omits container. The crash occurs in the restore path after archive extraction has begun. This issue has been patched in version 7.0.0.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 35% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
IN
incus · lxc
< 7.0.0 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-41684
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-41684
Patch
https://github.com/lxc/incus/releases/tag/v7.0.0
Exploit
https://github.com/lxc/incus/security/advisories/GHSA-x5r6-jr56-89pv
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