CVE-2026-16460: Bootc: ostree: bootc/ostree: staged deployments not revalidated against container signature policy before finalization

Severity: high (CVSS 7.4 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-10-19 · updated 2026-10-21
Weakness: CWE-345

Description

A flaw was found in bootc and ostree. Already-staged deployments are finalized without revalidating the deployment's container image against the current containers signature policy. Unsigned OS content staged under a prior permissive policy can remain bootable after policy is hardened to reject unsigned images, leading to full host compromise on reboot.

Affected products

Red Hat Hardened Images: all versions

References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-16460
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2503167

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