High · published September 21, 2026
A vulnerability in CRI-O checkpoint restore allows a user who can create a pod from a malicious checkpointed container to bypass the destination Kubernetes security context. The restored process may retain credentials, Linux capabilities, no_new_privs, and seccomp state from the checkpoint instead of enforcing the destination configuration. This can allow execution with elevated privileges across the container security boundary.
Affected upstream supported versions are CRI-O 1.34 and later. Downstream Red Hat products are affected from OCP 4.17 onward. Fixes have been applied to supported branches but are not yet released.
Exploitation requires permission to create a pod from a malicious checkpoint image and checkpoint restore functionality to be available.