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.

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History

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 01:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Katacontainers
Katacontainers kata-containers
Vendors & Products Katacontainers
Katacontainers kata-containers

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description 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.
Title Kata Containers: Unauthorized mem-agent ttRPC methods let an untrusted host tamper with confidential-guest memory
Weaknesses CWE-862
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L'}


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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-07T21:47:20.584Z

Reserved: 2026-07-20T17:12:12.891Z

Link: CVE-2026-64676

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-08T01:30:02Z

Weaknesses