CVE-2024-25621: containerd affected by a local privilege escalation via wide permissions on CRI directory

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: 2025-11-06 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-279

Description

containerd is an open-source container runtime. Versions 0.1.0 through 1.7.28, 2.0.0-beta.0 through 2.0.6, 2.1.0-beta.0 through 2.1.4 and 2.2.0-beta.0 through 2.2.0-rc.1 have an overly broad default permission vulnerability. Directory paths `/var/lib/containerd`, `/run/containerd/io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri` and `/run/containerd/io.containerd.sandbox.controller.v1.shim` were all created with incorrect permissions. This issue is fixed in versions 1.7.29, 2.0.7, 2.1.5 and 2.2.0. Workarounds include updating system administrator permissions so the host can manually chmod the directories to not have group or world accessible permissions, or to run containerd in rootless mode.

Affected products

containerd: before 1.7.29; from 2.0.0 before 2.0.7; from 2.1.0 before 2.1.5; 2.2.0-beta0, 2.2.0-beta1, 2.2.0-beta2, 2.2.0-rc0, 2.2.0-rc1 — fixed in 1.7.29, 2.0.7, 2.1.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: containerd 1.7.29, 2.0.7, 2.1.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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