CVE-2026-33481 Syft improper temporary file cleanup
Attackers can exhaust temporary storage by triggering errors during scans, causing denial of service for Syft and other system utilities.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-33481?
CVE-2026-33481 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in anchore syft, published on 26 Mar 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Syft is a a CLI tool and Go library for generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) from container images and filesystems. Syft versions before v1.42.3 would not properly cleanup temporary storage if the temporary storage was exhausted during a scan. When scanning archives Syft will unpack those archives into temporary storage then inspect the unpacked contents. Under normal operation Syft will remove the temporary data it writes after completing a scan. This vulnerability would affect users of Syft that were scanning content that could cause Syft to fill the temporary storage that would then cause Syft to raise an error and exit. When the error is triggered Syft would exit without properly removing the temporary files in use. In our testing this was most easily reproduced by scanning very large artifacts or highly compressed artifacts such as a zipbomb. Because Syft would not clean up its temporary files, the result would be filling temporary file storage preventing future runs of Syft or other system utilities that rely on temporary storage being available. The patch has been released in v1.42.3. Syft now cleans up temporary files when an error condition is encountered. There are no workarounds for this vulnerability in Syft. Users that find their temporary storage depleted can manually remove the temporary files.
Weakness: CWE-460
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-33481?
3 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/anchore/syft. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
github.com/anchore/syft Go | All versions | 1.42.3 |
github.com/anchore/syft Go | All versions | 1.42.3 |
github.com/anchore/syft Go | All versions | 1.42.3 |
Products include Anchore Syft.
How do I fix CVE-2026-33481?
Upgrade github.com/anchore/syft to 1.42.3 or later.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-33481 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-33481 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in anchore syft
Sources
Also known as CLEANSTART-2026-JS89270, CLEANSTART-2026-NN19549, GHSA-rjcw-vg7j-m9rc, GO-2026-4809, MINI-2p68-vhm4-8pcg, MINI-3739-9c44-g5c2 and 33 more.