What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-25749: runAsNonRoot logic bypass for Windows containers

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-05-24 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-284

Description

Windows workloads can run as ContainerAdministrator even when those workloads set the runAsNonRoot option to true.

Affected products

• Kubernetes: from 1.20.0 through 1.21.0; from 1.22.0 before 1.22.14; from 1.23.0 before 1.23.11; from 1.24.0 before 1.24.5 — fixed in 1.22.14, 1.23.11, 1.24.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Kubernetes 1.22.14, 1.23.11, 1.24.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/qqTZgulISzA
• https://groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/qqTZgulISzA

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