GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-863 vulnerability in github.com/containerd/imgcrypt. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for github.com/containerd/imgcrypt — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Incorrect Authorization in imgcrypt
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm.
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-8v99-48m9-c8pm 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 377,636 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/containerd/imgcryptReal-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
Imgcrypt implements a function CheckAuthorization() that is supposed to check whether a user is authorized to access an encrypted image given the keys that the user has provided on the command line that would enable decryption of the image. The check is to prevent that a user can start a container from an image that has previously been decrypted by another user on the same system and therefore a decrypted version of the image layers may be already available in the cache locally.
The failure occurs when an image with a ManifestList is used and the architecture of the local host is not the first one in the ManifestList. In the version prior to the fix, only the first architecture in the list was tested, which may not have its layers available locally (were not pulled) since it cannot be run on the host architecture. Therefore, the verdict on unavailable layers was that the image could be run anticipating that image run failure would occur later due to the layers not being available. However, this verdict to allow the image to run lead to other architectures in the ManifestList be able to run an image without providing keys if that image had previously been decrypted. The fixed version now skips over irrelevant architectures and tests the Manifest of the local architecture, if available.
Known projects that use the CheckAuthorization() of imgcrypt is for example the ctr-enc client tool provided by imgcrypt. In this implementation, the call to CheckAuthorization() is used on the client side and could therefore also be easily circumvented by a modified client tool not calling this function.
In relation to the vulnerability in ctr-enc, affected environments would have to allow different users to invoke ctr-enc indirectly using some sort of management stack that gives user indirect access to ctr-enc.
The patch has been applied to imgcrypt v1.1.4. Workarounds may include usage of different namespaces for each remote user.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/containerd/imgcrypt | all versions | 1.1.4go get github.com/containerd/imgcrypt@v1.1.4 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/containerd/imgcrypt, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/containerd/imgcrypt to 1.1.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm 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-8v99-48m9-c8pm can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm. 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.
Only Fedora is using the affected codebase. Hence, marking other products as of Low impact as they are using an affected version of 'imgcrypt' as a transitive dependency.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.11 | openshift4/kubernetes-nmstate-rhel8-operator:v4.11.0-202208020235.p0.ga6744d1.assembly.stream | RHSA-2022:5070 |
| RHACS-3.73-RHEL-8 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:3.73.0-4 | RHSA-2022:8827 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-8v99-48m9-c8pm across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.