CVE-2026-44517 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.3) Path Traversal vulnerability in github.com/containers/buildah. A fix is available for github.com/containers/buildah — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Buildah: Build breakout using malicious Containerfile and Git Smart HTTP server or GitHub release tar archive
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-44517.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
github.com/containers/buildahReal-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
Buildah is a tool that facilitates building OCI images. From 1.38.1 until 1.43.2 and 1.44.0, TempDirForURL in define/types.go does not securely confine Git repository subdirectories to the downloaded build context, and downloadToDirectory and stdinToDirectory can follow a Dockerfile symlink left by a partially extracted tar archive. A malicious server supplying a Git repository or tar archive can cause files outside the build context directory to be included in the context or copied into the build. This issue is fixed in versions 1.43.2 and 1.44.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/containers/buildah | ≥ 1.38.1&&< 1.43.2 | 1.43.2go get github.com/containers/buildah@v1.43.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/containers/buildah, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/containers/buildah to 1.43.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-44517 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
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.
Red Hat ships Buildah as a standalone package and as a bundled dependency in Podman across RHEL, OpenShift, and RHIVOS. Versions of Buildah from 1.38.1 through 1.43.1 are affected. Older streams (RHEL 8.x, RHEL 9.2, RHEL 9.4, OpenShift 4.12–4.18) ship Buildah versions below 1.38.1 and are not affected. RHEL 9.9 and…
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-44517 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-44517 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.