# CVE-2019-14891: Denial of service in cri-o

> An attacker can trigger an OOM condition to kill container management processes, potentially gaining host network access on cri-o hosts.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.0 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 25 Nov 2019
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-7hwv-gxwq-2g5p, RHSA-2020:2776

## What is CVE-2019-14891?

CVE-2019-14891 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 25 Nov 2019. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in cri-o, as a result of all pod-related processes being placed in the same memory cgroup. This can result in container management (conmon) processes being killed if a workload process triggers an out-of-memory (OOM) condition for the cgroup. An attacker could abuse this flaw to get host network access on an cri-o host.

Weakness: CWE-754 (Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions), CWE-460 (Improper Cleanup on Thrown Exception)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-14891?

It affects 3 products.


| Package | Ecosystem | Affected | Fixed in |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `cri-o` | Red Hat:openshift:4.2::el7 | All versions | 0:1.14.12-24.dev.rhaos4.2.gita17905f.el7 |
| `cri-o-debuginfo` | Red Hat:openshift:4.2::el7 | All versions | 0:1.14.12-24.dev.rhaos4.2.gita17905f.el7 |
| `cri-o` | Red Hat:openshift:4.2::el8 | All versions | 0:1.14.12-15.dev.rhaos4.2.gita17905f.el8 |
| `cri-o-debuginfo` | Red Hat:openshift:4.2::el8 | All versions | 0:1.14.12-15.dev.rhaos4.2.gita17905f.el8 |
| `cri-o-debugsource` | Red Hat:openshift:4.2::el8 | All versions | 0:1.14.12-15.dev.rhaos4.2.gita17905f.el8 |

Products: Fedoraproject Fedora, Kubernetes Cri-O, Redhat Openshift Container Platform.

## How do I fix CVE-2019-14891?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2019-14891 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-14891 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Fedoraproject Fedora

- [CVE-2024-4577](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4577/): PHP-CGI OS Command Injection (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2021-39226](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-39226/): Grafana Authentication Bypass (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2019-5544](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-5544/): VMware ESXi and Horizon DaaS OpenSLP Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-4947](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4947/): Google Chromium V8 Type Confusion (critical 9.6, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-4671](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-4671/): Google Chromium Visuals Use-After-Free (critical 9.6, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2019-14891 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2019-14891 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 25 Nov 2019. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-14891 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Fedoraproject Fedora. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-14891/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-14891/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-14891
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-14891
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2019-14891

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-14891/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.