CVE-2026-48754: Incus: Nil-pointer dereference in createDependentVolumesFromBackup on disk.{Volume,VolumeSnapshots,Pool}

Severity: low (CVSS 2.1 v4.0)
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: 2026-08-21 · updated 2026-10-15
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Prior to version 7.1.0, `(*backend).createDependentVolumesFromBackup` in `internal/server/storage/backend.go` contains a cluster of unguarded pointer derefs on every dependent-volume entry's `VolumeSnapshots[i]`, `Volume`, and `Pool` sub-fields. An authenticated user with `can_create_instances` permission on any project can crash the `incusd` daemon by uploading an instance backup tarball whose `dependent_volumes[*]` block contains a nil snapshot pointer (or omits `volume:` / `pool:`). This is a sibling-field variant of the 2026-05-04 batch fix `d768f81c0a1d985f35ae56219519822b080bf5e3` ("Properly check dependent volumes on import"). That commit added `if disk == nil` at the top of the outer loop, but did not guard the four sub-pointer fields the loop body dereferences naked. Version 7.1.0 contains an updated patch.

Affected products

lxc incus: before 7.1.0

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-48754 or the next vulnerability affects your stack