Docker vulnerabilities

Docker Desktop for Windows contains multiple incorrect permission assignment vulnerabilities in the installer's handling of the C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop directory. The installer creates this directory without proper ownership verification, creating two exploitation scenarios: Scenario 1 (Persistent Attack): If a low-privileged attacker pre-creates C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop before Docker Desktop installation, the attacker retains ownership of the directory even after the installer applies restrictive ACLs. At any time after installation completes, the attacker can modify the directory ACL (as the owner) and tamper with critical configuration files such as install-settings.json to specify a malicious credentialHelper, causing arbitrary code execution when any user runs Docker Desktop. Scenario 2 (TOCTOU Attack): During installation, there is a time-of-check-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition between when the installer creates C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop and when it sets secure ACLs. A low-privileged attacker actively monitoring for the installation can inject malicious files (such as install-settings.json) with attacker-controlled ACLs during this window, achieving the same code execution outcome.

Docker Desktop diagnostics bundles were found to include expired Hub PATs in log output due to error object serialization. This poses a risk of leaking sensitive information in exported diagnostics, especially when access denied errors occurred.

Docker Compose trusts the path information embedded in remote OCI compose artifacts. When a layer includes the annotations com.docker.compose.extends or com.docker.compose.envfile, Compose joins the attacker‑supplied value from com.docker.compose.file/com.docker.compose.envfile with its local cache directory and writes the file there. This affects any platform or workflow that resolves remote OCI compose artifacts, Docker Desktop, standalone Compose binaries on Linux, CI/CD runners, cloud dev environments is affected. An attacker can escape the cache directory and overwrite arbitrary files on the machine running docker compose, even if the user only runs read‑only commands such as docker compose config or docker compose ps. This issue is fixed in v2.40.2.

Docker Desktop Installer.exe is vulnerable to DLL hijacking due to insecure DLL search order. The installer searches for required DLLs in the user's Downloads folder before checking system directories, allowing local privilege escalation through malicious DLL placement.This issue affects Docker Desktop: through 4.48.0.

In a hardened Docker environment, with Enhanced Container Isolation ( ECI https://docs.docker.com/enterprise/security/hardened-desktop/enhanced-container-isolation/ ) enabled, an administrator can utilize the command restrictions feature https://docs.docker.com/enterprise/security/hardened-desktop/enhanced-container-isolation/config/#command-restrictions  to restrict commands that a container with a Docker socket mount may issue on that socket. Due to a software bug, the configuration to restrict commands was ignored when passed to ECI, allowing any command to be executed on the socket. This grants excessive privileges by permitting unrestricted access to powerful Docker commands. The vulnerability affects only Docker Desktop 4.46.0 users that have ECI enabled and are using the Docker socket command restrictions feature. In addition, since ECI restricts mounting the Docker socket into containers by default, it only affects containers which are explicitly allowed by the administrator to mount the Docker socket.

A vulnerability was identified in Docker Desktop that allows local running Linux containers to access the Docker Engine API via the configured Docker subnet, at 192.168.65.7:2375 by default. This vulnerability occurs with or without Enhanced Container Isolation (ECI) enabled, and with or without the "Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS" option enabled. This can lead to execution of a wide range of privileged commands to the engine API, including controlling other containers, creating new ones, managing images etc. In some circumstances (e.g. Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL backend) it also allows mounting the host drive with the same privileges as the user running Docker Desktop.

NVIDIA Container Toolkit for all platforms contains a vulnerability in some hooks used to initialize the container, where an attacker could execute arbitrary code with elevated permissions. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to escalation of privileges, data tampering, information disclosure, and denial of service.

System environment variables are recorded in Docker Desktop diagnostic logs, when using shell auto-completion. This leads to unintentional disclosure of sensitive information such as api keys, passwords, etc.  A malicious actor with read access to these logs could obtain secrets and further use them to gain unauthorized access to other systems. Starting with version 4.43.0 Docker Desktop no longer logs system environment variables as part of diagnostics log collection.

Registry Access Management (RAM) is a security feature allowing administrators to restrict access for their developers to only allowed registries. When a MacOS configuration profile is used to enforce organization sign-in, the RAM policies are not being applied, which would allow Docker Desktop users to pull down unapproved, and potentially malicious images from any registry.

Recording of environment variables, configured for running containers, in Docker Desktop application logs could lead to unintentional disclosure of sensitive information such as api keys, passwords, etc. A malicious actor with read access to these logs could obtain sensitive credentials information and further use it to gain unauthorized access to other systems. Starting with version 4.41.0, Docker Desktop no longer logs environment variables set by the user.

A vulnerability in the update process of Docker Desktop for Windows versions prior to 4.41.0 could allow a local, low-privileged attacker to escalate privileges to SYSTEM. During an update, Docker Desktop attempts to delete files and subdirectories under the path C:\ProgramData\Docker\config with high privileges. However, this directory often does not exist by default, and C:\ProgramData\ allows normal users to create new directories. By creating a malicious Docker\config folder structure at this location, an attacker can force the privileged update process to delete or manipulate arbitrary system files, leading to Elevation of Privilege.

A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability via crafted extension publisher-url/additional-urls could be abused by a malicious extension in Docker Desktop before 4.34.2.

A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability via crafted extension description/changelog could be abused by a malicious extension in Docker Desktop before 4.34.2.

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. runc 1.1.13 and earlier, as well as 1.2.0-rc2 and earlier, can be tricked into creating empty files or directories in arbitrary locations in the host filesystem by sharing a volume between two containers and exploiting a race with `os.MkdirAll`. While this could be used to create empty files, existing files would not be truncated. An attacker must have the ability to start containers using some kind of custom volume configuration. Containers using user namespaces are still affected, but the scope of places an attacker can create inodes can be significantly reduced. Sufficiently strict LSM policies (SELinux/Apparmor) can also in principle block this attack -- we suspect the industry standard SELinux policy may restrict this attack's scope but the exact scope of protection hasn't been analysed. This is exploitable using runc directly as well as through Docker and Kubernetes. The issue is fixed in runc v1.1.14 and v1.2.0-rc3. Some workarounds are available. Using user namespaces restricts this attack fairly significantly such that the attacker can only create inodes in directories that the remapped root user/group has write access to. Unless the root user is remapped to an actual user on the host (such as with rootless containers that don't use `/etc/sub[ug]id`), this in practice means that an attacker would only be able to create inodes in world-writable directories. A strict enough SELinux or AppArmor policy could in principle also restrict the scope if a specific label is applied to the runc runtime, though neither the extent to which the standard existing policies block this attack nor what exact policies are needed to sufficiently restrict this attack have been thoroughly tested.

Moby is an open-source project created by Docker for software containerization. A security vulnerability has been detected in certain versions of Docker Engine, which could allow an attacker to bypass authorization plugins (AuthZ) under specific circumstances. The base likelihood of this being exploited is low. Using a specially-crafted API request, an Engine API client could make the daemon forward the request or response to an authorization plugin without the body. In certain circumstances, the authorization plugin may allow a request which it would have otherwise denied if the body had been forwarded to it. A security issue was discovered In 2018, where an attacker could bypass AuthZ plugins using a specially crafted API request. This could lead to unauthorized actions, including privilege escalation. Although this issue was fixed in Docker Engine v18.09.1 in January 2019, the fix was not carried forward to later major versions, resulting in a regression. Anyone who depends on authorization plugins that introspect the request and/or response body to make access control decisions is potentially impacted. Docker EE v19.03.x and all versions of Mirantis Container Runtime are not vulnerable. docker-ce v27.1.1 containes patches to fix the vulnerability. Patches have also been merged into the master, 19.03, 20.0, 23.0, 24.0, 25.0, 26.0, and 26.1 release branches. If one is unable to upgrade immediately, avoid using AuthZ plugins and/or restrict access to the Docker API to trusted parties, following the principle of least privilege.

BuildKit is a toolkit for converting source code to build artifacts in an efficient, expressive and repeatable manner. In addition to running containers as build steps, BuildKit also provides APIs for running interactive containers based on built images. It was possible to use these APIs to ask BuildKit to run a container with elevated privileges. Normally, running such containers is only allowed if special `security.insecure` entitlement is enabled both by buildkitd configuration and allowed by the user initializing the build request. The issue has been fixed in v0.12.5 . Avoid using BuildKit frontends from untrusted sources.

BuildKit is a toolkit for converting source code to build artifacts in an efficient, expressive and repeatable manner. A malicious BuildKit frontend or Dockerfile using RUN --mount could trick the feature that removes empty files created for the mountpoints into removing a file outside the container, from the host system. The issue has been fixed in v0.12.5. Workarounds include avoiding using BuildKit frontends from an untrusted source or building an untrusted Dockerfile containing RUN --mount feature.

BuildKit is a toolkit for converting source code to build artifacts in an efficient, expressive and repeatable manner. Two malicious build steps running in parallel sharing the same cache mounts with subpaths could cause a race condition that can lead to files from the host system being accessible to the build container. The issue has been fixed in v0.12.5. Workarounds include, avoiding using BuildKit frontend from an untrusted source or building an untrusted Dockerfile containing cache mounts with --mount=type=cache,source=... options.

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI specification. In runc 1.1.11 and earlier, due to an internal file descriptor leak, an attacker could cause a newly-spawned container process (from runc exec) to have a working directory in the host filesystem namespace, allowing for a container escape by giving access to the host filesystem ("attack 2"). The same attack could be used by a malicious image to allow a container process to gain access to the host filesystem through runc run ("attack 1"). Variants of attacks 1 and 2 could be also be used to overwrite semi-arbitrary host binaries, allowing for complete container escapes ("attack 3a" and "attack 3b"). runc 1.1.12 includes patches for this issue.

Apache Commons Text performs variable interpolation, allowing properties to be dynamically evaluated and expanded. The standard format for interpolation is "${prefix:name}", where "prefix" is used to locate an instance of org.apache.commons.text.lookup.StringLookup that performs the interpolation. Starting with version 1.5 and continuing through 1.9, the set of default Lookup instances included interpolators that could result in arbitrary code execution or contact with remote servers. These lookups are: - "script" - execute expressions using the JVM script execution engine (javax.script) - "dns" - resolve dns records - "url" - load values from urls, including from remote servers Applications using the interpolation defaults in the affected versions may be vulnerable to remote code execution or unintentional contact with remote servers if untrusted configuration values are used. Users are recommended to upgrade to Apache Commons Text 1.10.0, which disables the problematic interpolators by default.

Apache Log4j2 2.0-beta9 through 2.15.0 (excluding security releases 2.12.2, 2.12.3, and 2.3.1) JNDI features used in configuration, log messages, and parameters do not protect against attacker controlled LDAP and other JNDI related endpoints. An attacker who can control log messages or log message parameters can execute arbitrary code loaded from LDAP servers when message lookup substitution is enabled. From log4j 2.15.0, this behavior has been disabled by default. From version 2.16.0 (along with 2.12.2, 2.12.3, and 2.3.1), this functionality has been completely removed. Note that this vulnerability is specific to log4j-core and does not affect log4net, log4cxx, or other Apache Logging Services projects.

The official memcached docker images before 1.5.11-alpine (Alpine specific) contain a blank password for a root user. System using the memcached docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow a remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official rabbitmq docker images before 3.7.13-beta.1-management-alpine (Alpine specific) contain a blank password for a root user. System using the rabbitmq docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow a remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official haproxy docker images before 1.8.18-alpine (Alpine specific) contain a blank password for a root user. System using the haproxy docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow a remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official adminer docker images before 4.7.0-fastcgi contain a blank password for a root user. System using the adminer docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow a remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official composer docker images before 1.8.3 contain a blank password for a root user. System using the composer docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow a remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official spiped docker images before 1.5-alpine contain a blank password for a root user. Systems using the spiped docker container deployed by affected versions of the docker image may allow an remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The official storm Docker images before 1.2.1 contain a blank password for a root user. Systems using the Storm Docker container deployed by affected versions of the Docker image may allow an remote attacker to achieve root access with a blank password.

The docker packages version docker-1.13.1-108.git4ef4b30.el7 as released for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extras via RHBA-2020:0053 (https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2020:0053) included an incorrect version of runc that was missing multiple bug and security fixes. One of the fixes regressed in that update was the fix for CVE-2016-9962, that was previously corrected in the docker packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extras via RHSA-2017:0116 (https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0116). The CVE-2020-14300 was assigned to this security regression and it is specific to the docker packages produced by Red Hat. The original issue - CVE-2016-9962 - could possibly allow a process inside container to compromise a process entering container namespace and execute arbitrary code outside of the container. This could lead to compromise of the container host or other containers running on the same container host. This issue only affects a single version of Docker, 1.13.1-108.git4ef4b30, shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Both earlier and later versions are not affected.

The version of docker as released for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extras via RHBA-2020:0053 advisory included an incorrect version of runc missing the fix for CVE-2019-5736, which was previously fixed via RHSA-2019:0304. This issue could allow a malicious or compromised container to compromise the container host and other containers running on the same host. This issue only affects docker version 1.13.1-108.git4ef4b30.el7, shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extras. Both earlier and later versions are not affected.

An issue was discovered in Docker Engine before 19.03.11. An attacker in a container, with the CAP_NET_RAW capability, can craft IPv6 router advertisements, and consequently spoof external IPv6 hosts, obtain sensitive information, or cause a denial of service.

Docker Desktop Community Edition before 2.1.0.1 allows local users to gain privileges by placing a Trojan horse docker-credential-wincred.exe file in %PROGRAMDATA%\DockerDesktop\version-bin\ as a low-privilege user, and then waiting for an admin or service user to authenticate with Docker, restart Docker, or run 'docker login' to force the command.