A vulnerability in CRI-O checkpoint restore allows a user who can create a pod from a malicious checkpointed container to bypass the destination Kubernetes security context

Overview

A vulnerability in CRI-O checkpoint restore allows a user who can create a pod from a malicious checkpointed container to bypass the destination Kubernetes security context. The restored process may retain credentials, Linux capabilities, no_new_privs, and seccomp state from the checkpoint instead of enforcing the destination configuration. This can allow execution with elevated privileges across the container security boundary. Affected upstream supported versions are CRI-O 1.34 and later. Downstream Red Hat products are affected from OCP 4.17 onward. Fixes have been applied to supported branches but are not yet released. Exploitation requires permission to create a pod from a malicious checkpoint image and checkpoint restore functionality to be available.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.

Vendor advisories

• Red Hat VEX · Important · affected: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · no fix planned: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · updated 2026-09-21 · vex