CVE-2025-64433 KubeVirt Arbitrary Container File Read

What is CVE-2025-64433?

CVE-2025-64433 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in kubevirt, published on 7 Nov 2025. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

KubeVirt is a virtual machine management add-on for Kubernetes. Prior to 1.5.3 and 1.6.1, a vulnerability was discovered that allows a VM to read arbitrary files from the virt-launcher pod's file system. This issue stems from improper symlink handling when mounting PVC disks into a VM. Specifically, if a malicious user has full or partial control over the contents of a PVC, they can create a symbolic link that points to a file within the virt-launcher pod's file system. Since libvirt can treat regular files as block devices, any file on the pod's file system that is symlinked in this way can be mounted into the VM and subsequently read. Although a security mechanism exists where VMs are executed as an unprivileged user with UID 107 inside the virt-launcher container, limiting the scope of accessible resources, this restriction is bypassed due to a second vulnerability. The latter causes the ownership of any file intended for mounting to be changed to the unprivileged user with UID 107 prior to mounting. As a result, an attacker can gain access to and read arbitrary files located within the virt-launcher pod's file system or on a mounted PVC from within the guest VM. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.5.3 and 1.6.1.

Weakness: CWE-22

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-64433?

5 open source packages ship an affected version, including kubevirt.io/kubevirt. It affects 1 product.

Products include Kubevirt Kubevirt.

How do I fix CVE-2025-64433?

Upgrade kubevirt.io/kubevirt to a fixed version for your release line: 1.5.3, 1.6.0-beta.0.0.20250801195231-a81b27d4600c or 1.6.1.

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

Is CVE-2025-64433 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2025-64433 exists.

Other vulnerabilities in kubevirt

• CVE-2020-14316 Privilege Escalation in kubevirt Critical 9.9
• 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

Sources

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

Also known as AZL-69799, AZL-69958, GHSA-qw6q-3pgr-5cwq, GO-2025-4109, MINI-fgj7-85wg-q85x, MINI-mhm4-2fgw-g69r.