Medium severity · published Sep 14, 2026
CVE-2026-53495
containerd CRI ExecSync Goroutine Leak Leading to Node-Level Denial of Service
6.8
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
containerd is an open-source container runtime. Prior to 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, and 2.3.5, containerd on Linux with the CRI plugin enabled can indefinitely block the drainExecSyncIO goroutine in internal/cri/server/container_execsync.go when CRI ExecSync is used by exec probes or lifecycle hooks that launch long-lived background child processes retaining standard input and output pipes. The input and output drain phase has no default timeout and did not stop when the request context was canceled, so repeated ExecSync invocations can accumulate blocked goroutines and host memory. The resulting resource exhaustion can cause the OOM killer to terminate containerd, leaving the container runtime unavailable until restart. Deployments not using containerd's CRI implementation and containers not running on Linux are not affected. This issue is fixed in versions 1.7.35, 2.0.12, 2.2.8, and 2.3.5.
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 5% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
CO
containerd · containerd
< 1.7.35; >= 2.0.0, < 2.0.12; >= 2.2.0, < 2.2.8; >= 2.3.0, < 2.3.5 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-53495
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-53495
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/22ccf4314d1fe0834f8e28f10d37d5305ef9880c
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/5a2a3a759b0d2ad8c821b33c3afc20890daf6d81
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/9ec55f024041d0641f6d79841e45c8781141ddaa
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/eebea8c4c912f44b656c8295c9e6607a19b76650
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/ff39a972369e2f12fae561a58d658bbf8f2bc318
github.com
https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/tag/v2.0.12
More from containerd
9.9
CVE-2026-50195
containerd: CRI checkpoint import allows local image tag poisoning
9.6
CVE-2026-53492
containerd CRI checkpoint restore CDI annotation smuggling
8.8
CVE-2026-53488
containerd CRI plugin: — image-config `LABEL` flows to restart-monitor `binary://` logger: host-root command execution from an image pull
7.8
CVE-2026-95837
containerd CRI plugin: Checkpoint restore bypasses destination security context
7.8
CVE-2026-46680
containerd user ID handling bypass allows runAsNonRoot evasion
