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MEDIUM Received

CVE-2026-64676

Kata Containers is an open source implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that perform like containers. In versions prior to 4.0.0, the kata-agent is vulnerable to an authorization bypass in confidential-guest memory management. In Confidential Containers (CoCo) deployments, the kata-agent enforces an OPA/Rego-based AgentPolicy that must authorize every ttRPC API call, forming the security boundary that prevents an untrusted host from directing the confidential guest. Two ttRPC methods introduced with the mem-agent feature are missing this authorization check, so an untrusted host can invoke them unconditionally regardless of the guest's policy configuration. When mem-agent is enabled (off by default), this lets the host tamper with in-guest memory management by forcing swap, aggressive eviction, or compaction, resulting in attacker-controlled availability and performance degradation of the confidential workload entirely outside the agent-policy boundary. The impact does not include memory disclosure or code execution, and severity is bounded by the precondition that mem-agent must be explicitly enabled. This issue is fixed in version 4.0.0.

Published 07 Aug 2026, 22:16 UTC Last modified 07 Aug 2026, 22:16 UTC
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Attack profile

The conditions required to exploit this vulnerability and its potential impact.

Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Scope Changed
Confidentiality None
Integrity Low
Availability Low
Exploitability2.5
Impact2.7
02

Affected products

Product applicability statements supplied with the NVD record.

NVD has not published structured affected-product data for this record.
03

Weakness classification

CWE categories help security teams group the underlying software weakness.

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Source references

External advisories, patches and technical reports attached to this CVE record.