Description
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Incus instances have an option to provide credentials to systemd in the guest. For containers, this is handled through a shared directory. Prior to version 6.23.0, an attacker can set a configuration key named something like `systemd.credential.../../../../../../root/.bashrc` to cause Incus to write outside of the `credentials` directory associated with the container. This makes use of the fact that the Incus syntax for such credentials is `systemd.credential.XYZ` where `XYZ` can itself contain more periods. While it's not possible to read any data this way, it's possible to write to arbitrary files as root, enabling both privilege escalation and denial of service attacks. Version 6.23.0 fixes the issue.
CVSS Metrics
- Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack Vector
- network
- Complexity
- low
- Privileges
- low
- User Action
- none
- Scope
- changed
- Confidentiality
- high
- Integrity
- high
- Availability
- high
- Weaknesses
- CWE-22
Metadata
- Primary Vendor
- LINUXCONTAINERS
- Published
- 3/27/2026
- Last Modified
- 4/1/2026
- Source
- NIST NVD
- Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.
Affected Products
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