CVE-2026-64676

Kata Containers: Unauthorized mem-agent ttRPC methods let an untrusted host tamper with confidential-guest memory

State
Published
Severity
5.7 Medium
Published
Aug 7, 2026
Updated
Aug 13, 2026
Reserved
Jul 20, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Kata Containers is an open source implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 4.0.0, the kata-agent is vulnerable to an authorization bypass in confidential-guest memory management. In Confidential Containers (CoCo) deployments, the kata-agent enforces an OPA/Rego-based AgentPolicy that must authorize every ttRPC API call, forming the security boundary that prevents an untrusted host from directing the confidential guest. Two ttRPC methods introduced with the mem-agent feature are missing this authorization check, so an untrusted host can invoke them unconditionally regardless of the guest's policy configuration. When mem-agent is enabled (off by default), this lets the host tamper with in-guest memory management by forcing swap, aggressive eviction, or compaction, resulting in attacker-controlled availability and performance degradation of the confidential workload entirely outside the agent-policy boundary. The impact does not include memory disclosure or code execution, and severity is bounded by the precondition that mem-agent must be explicitly enabled. This issue is fixed in version 4.0.0.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.7 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:LGitHub_M

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
kata-containerskata-containers
  • < 4.0.0Affected

References

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