CVE-2021-4024 — podman
MEDIUMCVE-2021-4024 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Information Exposure vulnerability in github.com/containers/podman/v3. A fix is available for github.com/containers/podman/v3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor and Origin Validation Error in podman
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-4024 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/containers/podman/v3Real-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 podman. The podman machine function (used to create and manage Podman virtual machine containing a Podman process) spawns a gvproxy process on the host system. The gvproxy API is accessible on port 7777 on all IP addresses on the host. If that port is open on the host's firewall, an attacker can potentially use the gvproxy API to forward ports on the host to ports in the VM, making private services on the VM accessible to the network. This issue could be also used to interrupt the host's services by forwarding all ports to the VM.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/containers/podman/v3 | all versions | 3.4.3go get github.com/containers/podman/v3@v3.4.3 |
Affected Products
fedorafedoraprojectpodmanpodman_projectenterprise linuxredhatDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/containers/podman/v3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/containers/podman/v3 to 3.4.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-4024 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | container-tools:rhel8-8100020241101101019.afee755d | RHSA-2024:10289 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | podman-2:4.2.0-3.el9 | RHSA-2022:7954 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-4024 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.