Cri-o: cri-o: unvalidated image env var causes daemon crash

A flaw was found in CRI-O's container-creation environment-variable handling (`mergeEnvs` in `server/utils.go`, consumed by `setupContainerEnvironmentAndWorkdir` in `server/container_create.go`). When a `CreateContainer` request supplies a `nil` CRI `Envs` field, CRI-O falls back to using the target OCI image's `config.Env` entries unfiltered, in contrast to the normal merge path, which validates each entry for a `key=value` form before use. An OCI image whose `config.Env` contains an entry with no `=` character (e.g. a bare `NOEQUALS` string) causes CRI-O to split that entry into a single-element slice and then index its second element, which is out of range. This triggers an unrecovered Go runtime panic in the `crio` daemon process, crashing it and terminating the container-runtime service for all workloads on the node until it is restarted.

Source published

24 Aug 2026 21:22:49 UTC

Source modified

21 Oct 2026 20:12:46 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

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CVSS 3.1 · 6.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H