RCE in Containers Podman

CVE-2026-33414

Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. Versions 4.8.0 through 5.8.1 contain a command injection vulnerability in the HyperV machine backend in pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go, where the VM image path is inserted into a PowerShell double-quoted string without sanitization, allowing $() subexpression injection. Because PowerShell evaluates subexpressions inside double-quoted strings before executing the outer command, an attacker who can control the VM image path through a crafted machine name or image directory can execute arbitrary PowerShell commands with the privileges of the Podman process. On typical Windows installations this means SYSTEM-level code execution, and only Windows is affected as the code is exclusive to the HyperV backend. This issue has been patched in version 5.8.2.

Vulnerability class: Command Injection (OS Command Injection)

EPSS: 0.006 (47.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-33414?
CVE-2026-33414 is a high-severity vulnerability in Containers Podman, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-04-14.
How severe is CVE-2026-33414?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.