# CVE-2026-17113: Cri-o: cri-o: unvalidated image env var causes daemon crash

> A malicious OCI image with malformed environment variables can crash the CRI-O daemon, causing a denial of service for all workloads on the node.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.0 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 24 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-97649

## What is CVE-2026-17113?

CVE-2026-17113 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4, published on 24 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in CRI-O's container-creation environment-variable handling
(`mergeEnvs` in `server/utils.go`, consumed by `setupContainerEnvironmentAndWorkdir` in
`server/container_create.go`). When a `CreateContainer` request supplies a `nil` CRI
`Envs` field, CRI-O falls back to using the target OCI image's `config.Env` entries
unfiltered, in contrast to the normal merge path, which validates each entry for a
`key=value` form before use. An OCI image whose `config.Env` contains an entry with no
`=` character (e.g. a bare `NOEQUALS` string) causes CRI-O to split that entry into a
single-element slice and then index its second element, which is out of range. This
triggers an unrecovered Go runtime panic in the `crio` daemon process, crashing it and
terminating the container-runtime service for all workloads on the node until it is
restarted.

Weakness: CWE-1287 (Improper Validation of Specified Type of Input)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-17113?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-17113?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-17113 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2026-17113 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-17113 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-17113 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-17113 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4, published on 24 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-17113 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4. 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-2026-17113/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-17113/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-17113
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-17113
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-17113

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-17113/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.