GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-59 vulnerability in github.com/containers/podman/v4. A fix is available for github.com/containers/podman/v4 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Buildah (as part of Podman) vulnerable to Link Following
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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 GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf.
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
GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf 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 376,715 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
github.com/containers/podman/v4Real-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 vulnerability was found in buildah. Incorrect following of symlinks while reading .containerignore and .dockerignore results in information disclosure.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/containers/podman/v4 | all versions | 4.5.0go get github.com/containers/podman/v4@v4.5.0 |
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/podman/v4, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/containers/podman/v4 to 4.5.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf 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 GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf. 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.
These bugs come about when "podman --remote build ..." is run, thus affecting buildah, but the bug itself needs to be fixed in podman, and ported to Buildah.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 Extended Update Support | container-tools:rhel8-8080020240422101606.0f77c1b7 | RHSA-2024:2077 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | podman-2:5.2.2-1.el9 | RHSA-2024:9102 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-4crw-w8pw-2hmf across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.