Podman: Malformed Image can trick podman run into leaking host environment variables into the container

## Summary An container image that contains a environment variable with just a key and no value can trick podman into passing that variable from the host into the container. This is made worse by the fact that using an asterisk (*) will cause podman to pass all host variables into the container. So essentially a malicious image can exfiltrate all podman environment variables that are set in the session from where the container is launched. ## Details podman run allows `--env VAR1` or `--env VAR*` which will read the variable values from the current environment and then passes them into the container. However because the same parsing logic was reused for the image config env section that means that an image variable could also gain access to that. ## Patch That image spec requires the env variables to be in the form of `key=value`, so to address this invalid formatted variables get rejected and the container will not run. Fixed in https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/commit/6c431b73dbf8e4b20b778644d7a80caebdb75050 ## Workaround Do not run untrusted images. Before running an image consider inspecting the config with `podman image inspect --format '{{.Config.Env}}' <image>` and check for any variables that do not have a value assigned.

Source published

24 Sep 2026 19:40:20 UTC

Source modified

1 Oct 2026 20:55:51 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS_V3 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Publisher rating · HIGH