CVE-2023-38496
MediumCVSS 6.1Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs
Summary
Apptainer is an open source container platform. Version 1.2.0-rc.2 introduced an ineffective privilege drop when requesting container network setup, allowing subsequent functions to be called with root privileges.
Risk Assessment
The attack surface is rather limited for users, but an attacker could craft a starter config to delete any directory on the host filesystems.
Recommendation
It is recommended to upgrade to Apptainer version 1.2.1, which includes a security fix. There are no known workarounds outside of this upgrade.
Other vulnerabilities in Apptainer
See all- CVE-2026-48785Medium
Apptainer before version 1.5.1 has a vulnerability in Image.AuthorizedPath that applies plain string-prefix matching to the limit container paths directive in apptainer.conf, so an allowed path such as /data/safe also authorizes a sibling path such as /data/safe-but-unsafe. A local user can consequently run a container from a directory outside the administrator's intended allowlist when Apptainer operates in setuid mode.
- CVE-2025-65105Medium
Apptainer versions less than 1.4.5 allow a container to disable two forms of the little-used --security option, specifically --security=apparmor:<profile> and --security=selinux:<label>, which otherwise restrict container operations. The --security option is documented as a root feature, but these forms also work for unprivileged users on systems where the corresponding feature is enabled. The vulnerability is fixed in 1.4.5.
- CVE-2023-30549High
Apptainer is an open source container platform for Linux. There is an ext4 use-after-free flaw that is exploitable through versions of Apptainer < 1.1.0 and installations that include apptainer-suid < 1.1.8 on older operating systems where that CVE has not been patched, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Debian 10 buster, Ubuntu 18.04 bionic and Ubuntu 20.04 focal. Use-after-free flaws in the kernel can be used to attack the kernel for denial of service and potentially for privilege escalation.
Original NVD description (English source)
Apptainer is an open source container platform. Version 1.2.0-rc.2 introduced an ineffective privilege drop when requesting container network setup, therefore subsequent functions are called with root privileges, the attack surface is rather limited for users but an attacker could possibly craft a starter config to delete any directory on the host filesystems. A security fix has been included in Apptainer 1.2.1. There is no known workaround outside of upgrading to Apptainer 1.2.1.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS