GHSA-7jxh-36q5-gcqv CVE-2026-53495 GO-2026-6444

containerd: CRI ExecSync Goroutine Leak Leads to Node-Level Denial of Service

Medium Go

Severity: 0.0 / 10; Medium · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.16%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 5.33% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Fix: Available; 2 packages have a fixed version

Description

Impact

A bug in containerd's CRI ExecSync implementation allows exec probes and lifecycle hooks with background child processes to keep containerd's stdio-drain goroutines indefinitely blocked. Because the I/O drain phase lacks a default timeout or context cancellation handling, repeated ExecSync invocations (like probes) that include long-lived background processes against a container can cause containerd to leak goroutines and host memory. Over time, this resource exhaustion can cause the containerd daemon to be terminated by the OOM killer, rendering containerd unavailable until it is restarted. This issue affects containerd on Linux systems running with the CRI plugin enabled. Users not using containerd's CRI implementation or not running containers on Linux are not affected.

Patches

This bug has been fixed in containerd 2.3.5, 2.2.8, 2.0.12, and 1.7.35. Users should update to these versions to resolve the issue.

Workarounds

Ensure exec probes and lifecycle hooks do not launch long-lived background child processes.

Credits

The containerd project would like to thank XlabAI Team of Tencent Xuanwu Lab (xlabai@tencent.com), including Guannan Wang, Zhanpeng Liu, Jiashuo Liang, and Guancheng Li, and @IamwhatIamSY who independently discovered and responsibly disclosed this issue in accordance with the containerd security policy.

For more information

If there are any questions or comments about this advisory:

Open an issue in containerd
Send an email to security@containerd.io

To report a security issue in containerd:

Report a new vulnerability
Send an email to security@containerd.io

Affected versions

Go

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
github.com/containerd/containerd	`< 1.7.35`	`1.7.35`
github.com/containerd/containerd/v2	`< 2.0.12`	`2.0.12`
github.com/containerd/containerd/v2	`>= 2.2.0, < 2.2.8`	`2.2.8`
github.com/containerd/containerd/v2	`>= 2.3.0, < 2.3.5`	`2.3.5`
github.com/containerd/containerd/v2	`< 2.0.12` `>= 2.2.0, < 2.2.8` `>= 2.3.0, < 2.3.5`	`2.0.12` `2.2.8` `2.3.5`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

github.com/containerd/containerd Go → `1.7.35`

go

go get github.com/containerd/containerd@v1.7.35 && go mod tidy

github.com/containerd/containerd/v2 Go → `2.0.12`

go

go get github.com/containerd/containerd/v2@v2.0.12 && go mod tidy

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 0.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack vector: Local
Attack complexity: Low
Attack requirements: None
Privileges required: Low
User interaction: None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system): None
Integrity (vulnerable system): None
Availability (vulnerable system): High
Confidentiality (subsequent systems): None
Integrity (subsequent systems): None
Availability (subsequent systems): None

Weakness

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.

References

Packages

github.com/containerd/containerd

Timeline

Sep 9, 2026 Published
Sep 25, 2026 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-rp3h-jf77-q9p4 containerd: Unpack DoS via repeated opaque whiteouts	Medium	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GO-2026-6791 containerd CRI plugin: Checkpoint restore bypasses destination security context	High	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GHSA-pg57-6jwg-q645 Containerd has image-pull DoS via crafted OCI index graph amplification	Medium	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GO-2026-5064 containerd CRI checkpoint restore CDI annotation smuggling	Critical	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GO-2026-5622 Arbitrary host CRI log file read via symlink following in CRI checkpoint restore	Medium	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GHSA-xhf5-7wjv-pqxp containerd CRI — image-config `LABEL` flows to restart-monitor `binary://` logger: host-root command execution from an image pull	High	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GO-2026-5338 containerd: CRI checkpoint import allows local image tag poisoning	Critical	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd
GHSA-jpcc-p29g-p8mq containerd image-triggered runtime DoS via unbounded group parsing	Medium	Also affects github.com/containerd/containerd

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