What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-25153: containerd OCI image importer memory exhaustion

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-02-16 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-770

Description

containerd is an open source container runtime. Before versions 1.6.18 and 1.5.18, when importing an OCI image, there was no limit on the number of bytes read for certain files. A maliciously crafted image with a large file where a limit was not applied could cause a denial of service. This bug has been fixed in containerd 1.6.18 and 1.5.18. Users should update to these versions to resolve the issue. As a workaround, ensure that only trusted images are used and that only trusted users have permissions to import images.

Affected products

• containerd: before 1.5.18; from 1.6.0 before 1.6.18 — fixed in 1.5.18, 1.6.18

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: containerd 1.5.18, 1.6.18. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/0c314901076a74a7b797a545d2f462285fdbb8c4
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/tag/v1.5.18
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/tag/v1.6.18
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/security/advisories/GHSA-259w-8hf6-59c2
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/commit/0c314901076a74a7b797a545d2f462285fdbb8c4
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/tag/v1.5.18
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/tag/v1.6.18
• https://github.com/containerd/containerd/security/advisories/GHSA-259w-8hf6-59c2

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