GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9
MEDIUMLibcontainer is affected by capabilities elevation similar to GHSA-f3fp-gc8g-vw66
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
libcontainerReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
In libcontainer, while creating a tenant container, the tenant builder accepts a list of capabilities to be added in the spec of tenant container. Code can be seen here . The logic here adds the given capabilities to all capabilities of main container if present in spec, otherwise simply set provided capabilities as capabilities of the tenant container.
However, GHSA-f3fp-gc8g-vw66 was opened on runc mentioning that setting inherited caps in any case for tenant container can lead to elevation of capabilities. For this, they added a fix here where they never set new inherited caps on tenant, and set ambient caps only if original container had inherited caps.
Similarly crun never sets inherited caps as can be seen here.
[!NOTE] This does not affect youki binary itself, as the exec implementation is partially broken and does not pass on the user-provided caps to tenant containers, this is only applicable if you are using libcontainer directly and using the tenant builder.
Workarounds
- Do not pass any user-provided capabilities to the tenant builder, in which case no capabilities will be set on tenant.
- Alternatively you can verify the capabilities of original container and filter the user passed capabilities before setting them on tenant.
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | libcontainer | all versions | 0.5.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for libcontainer. 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 libcontainer to 0.5.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9 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 GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9 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 GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-5w4j-f78p-4wh9 across crates.io dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.