CVE-2020-14316 Privilege Escalation in kubevirt

What is CVE-2020-14316?

CVE-2020-14316 is a critical path traversal vulnerability in kubevirt, published on 29 Jul 2020. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A flaw was found in kubevirt 0.29 and earlier. Virtual Machine Instances (VMIs) can be used to gain access to the host's filesystem. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to assume the privileges of the VM process on the host system. In worst-case scenarios an attacker can read and modify any file on the system where the VMI is running. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-14316?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including kubevirt.io/kubevirt. It affects 2 products.

Products include Kubevirt Kubevirt, Redhat Openshift Virtualization.

How do I fix CVE-2020-14316?

Upgrade kubevirt.io/kubevirt to 0.30.0 or later.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2020-14316 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-14316 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in kubevirt

• CVE-2022-1798 Path Traversal vulnerability in Kubevirt High 8.7
• CVE-2025-64324 KubeVirt Vulnerable to Arbitrary Host File Read and Write High 8.5
• CVE-2023-26484 On a compromised KubeVirt node, the virt-handler service account can be used to modify all node specs High 8.2
• CVE-2026-13201 Path traversal in Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.12 High 7.3
• CVE-2025-64436 KubeVirt Excessive Role Permissions Could Enable Unauthorized VMI Migrations Between Nodes Medium 6.9

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-828r-r2c8-rfw3, GO-2024-2756.