CVE-2026-33481
MEDIUMSyft improper temporary file cleanup
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.
Blast Radius
github.com/anchore/syftReal-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
Syft is a a CLI tool and Go library for generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) from container images and filesystems. Syft versions before v1.42.3 would not properly cleanup temporary storage if the temporary storage was exhausted during a scan. When scanning archives Syft will unpack those archives into temporary storage then inspect the unpacked contents. Under normal operation Syft will remove the temporary data it writes after completing a scan. This vulnerability would affect users of Syft that were scanning content that could cause Syft to fill the temporary storage that would then cause Syft to raise an error and exit. When the error is triggered Syft would exit without properly removing the temporary files in use. In our testing this was most easily reproduced by scanning very large artifacts or highly compressed artifacts such as a zipbomb. Because Syft would not clean up its temporary files, the result would be filling temporary file storage preventing future runs of Syft or other system utilities that rely on temporary storage being available. The patch has been released in v1.42.3. Syft now cleans up temporary files when an error condition is encountered. There are no workarounds for this vulnerability in Syft. Users that find their temporary storage depleted can manually remove the temporary files.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/anchore/syft | all versions | 1.42.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/anchore/syft. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update github.com/anchore/syft to 1.42.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-33481 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 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-33481 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-33481. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-33481 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-33481 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.