CVE-2020-14316 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.9) vulnerability in kubevirt.io/kubevirt. A fix is available for kubevirt.io/kubevirt — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Privilege Escalation in kubevirt
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-14316 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
kubevirt.io/kubevirtReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A flaw was found in kubevirt 0.29 and earlier. Virtual Machine Instances (VMIs) can be used to gain access to the host's filesystem. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to assume the privileges of the VM process on the host system. In worst-case scenarios an attacker can read and modify any file on the system where the VMI is running. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | kubevirt.io/kubevirt | all versions | 0.30.0go get kubevirt.io/kubevirt@v0.30.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for kubevirt.io/kubevirt, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update kubevirt.io/kubevirt to 0.30.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-14316 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2020-14316 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2020-14316. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
OpenShift Virtualization 1.4 and 2.3 use affected version of kubevirt in virt-launcher container, however impact is rated Moderate as VMIs are running as non-root and thus have limited access to the host's filesystem.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| RHEL-8-CNV-2.4 | container-native-virtualization/kubevirt-cpu-model-nfd-plugin:v2.4.0-17 | RHSA-2020:3194 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-14316 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2020-14316 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.