CVE-2026-9804 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.7) CWE-59 vulnerability in kubevirt.io/kubevirt. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
KubeVirt has a Link Following issue
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-2026-9804.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-9804 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 384,993 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
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's virt-exportserver component. An attacker with specific namespace-level access can exploit a path traversal vulnerability in the VMExport directory endpoint. By placing a symbolic link (symlink) within an exported filesystem Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) that points outside its designated mount root, the attacker can read arbitrary files from the exporter pod's filesystem. This leads to information disclosure, potentially exposing sensitive data.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | kubevirt.io/kubevirt | all versions | No fix |
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.
Remediation status
No patched version of kubevirt.io/kubevirt has shipped for CVE-2026-9804 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.17 | container-native-virtualization/virt-exportserver-rhel9:1781757410 | RHSA-2026:28002 |
| Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.18 | container-native-virtualization/virt-exportserver-rhel9:1781928221 | RHSA-2026:27913 |
| Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.19 | container-native-virtualization/virt-exportserver-rhel9:1781590993 | RHSA-2026:27914 |
| Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.20 | container-native-virtualization/virt-exportserver-rhel9:1781838712 | RHSA-2026:27983 |
| Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.21 | container-native-virtualization/virt-exportserver-rhel9:1782012918 | RHSA-2026:27903 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-9804 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.