CVE-2025-52565: container escape due to /dev/console mount and related races

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2025-11-06 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-61

Description

runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. Versions 1.0.0-rc3 through 1.2.7, 1.3.0-rc.1 through 1.3.2, and 1.4.0-rc.1 through 1.4.0-rc.2, due to insufficient checks when bind-mounting `/dev/pts/$n` to `/dev/console` inside the container, an attacker can trick runc into bind-mounting paths which would normally be made read-only or be masked onto a path that the attacker can write to. This attack is very similar in concept and application to CVE-2025-31133, except that it attacks a similar vulnerability in a different target (namely, the bind-mount of `/dev/pts/$n` to `/dev/console` as configured for all containers that allocate a console). This happens after `pivot_root(2)`, so this cannot be used to write to host files directly -- however, as with CVE-2025-31133, this can load to denial of service of the host or a container breakout by providing the attacker with a writable copy of `/proc/sysrq-trigger` or `/proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern` (respectively). This issue is fixed in versions 1.2.8, 1.3.3 and 1.4.0-rc.3.

Affected products

opencontainers runc: from 1.0.1 before 1.2.8; from 1.3.0 before 1.3.3; 1.0.0-rc3, 1.0.0-rc4, 1.0.0-rc5, 1.0.0-rc6, 1.0.0-rc7, 1.0.0-rc8 (+9) — fixed in 1.2.8, 1.3.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: opencontainers runc 1.2.8, 1.3.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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