CVE-2026-9640 LXD Snapshot Import Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

What is CVE-2026-9640?

CVE-2026-9640 is a high-severity vulnerability in Canonical LXD, published on 26 Jun 2026. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in LXD from 6.0 before 6.9, 5.21.0 before 5.21.5, and 5.0.0 before 5.0.7 regarding the handling of project-restriction policies during snapshot restoration.. An authenticated project operator in a restricted multi-tenant environment can bypass policy restrictions by importing a maliciously crafted instance backup containing restricted configuration keys within a snapshot. When the snapshot is restored, these restricted keys are applied to the live instance without policy validation. Starting the modified instance grants the operator unauthorized host root access.

Weakness: CWE-863

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-9640?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Canonical Lxd.

How do I fix CVE-2026-9640?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Is CVE-2026-9640 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-9640 exists.

Other vulnerabilities in Canonical LXD

• CVE-2026-66897 Instance template path traversal allows arbitrary host file write as root Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-62420 Cross-project cluster migration bypasses project restrictions via cluster notification flag Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-63293 Arbitrary File Read/Write: metadata.yaml symlink in image allows host filesystem access as root Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-63294 Root RCE via image backup.yaml symlink Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-63296 Project restriction bypass via instance migration config override Critical 9.9

Sources

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

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-9640, GHSA-ppq7-4492-5552.