CVE-2026-96812: Host Root Sandbox Escape in gVisor via Character Device Passthrough and CUSE

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v4.0)
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: 2026-09-25 · updated 2026-09-25
Weakness: CWE-269

Description

Improper Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere in the host file helper (gofer) in Google gVisor prior to commit 573a9e73cf844f on Linux platforms with CUSE enabled allows a local attacker with container image deployment privileges to achieve root code execution on the host system. By including a /dev/cuse character device node in a container image, opening the device passes through to the host, allowing the sandboxed attacker to register a host device and exploit CUSE unrestricted ioctl handling to overwrite root udev helper memory.

References

https://github.com/google/gvisor/commit/573a9e73cf844f

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