Container Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Affecting Cisco Products: February 2019

A vulnerability in the Open Container Initiative runc CLI tool used by multiple products could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to escalate privileges on a targeted system.

The vulnerability exists because the affected software improperly handles file descriptors related to /proc/self/exe. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability either by persuading a user to create a new container using an attacker-controlled image or by using the docker exec command to attach into an existing container that the attacker already has write access to. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to overwrite the host’s runc binary file with a malicious file, escape the container, and execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on the host system.

This advisory will be updated as additional information becomes available.

This advisory is available at the following link:
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190215-runc [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190215-runc”]