Package Instance

podman kube play symlink traversal vulnerability
### Impact

The podman kube play command can overwrite host files when the kube file contains a ConfigMap or Secret volume mount and the volume already contains a symlink to a host file.
This allows a malicious container to write to arbitrary files on the host BUT the attacker only controls the target path not the contents that will be written to the file. The contents are defined in the yaml file by the end user.

### Requirements to exploit:
podman kube play must be used with a ConfigMap or Secret volume mount AND must be run more than once on the same volume. All the attacker has to do is create the malicious symlink on the volume the first time it is started. After that all following starts would follow the symlink and write to the host location. 


### Patches
Fixed in podman v5.6.1
https://github.com/containers/podman/commit/43fbde4e665fe6cee6921868f04b7ccd3de5ad89

### Workarounds

Don't use podman kube play with ConfigMap or Secret volume mounts.

### PR with test for CI

Adding on 9/8/2025 by @TomSweeneyRedHat , this is the PR containing the test in CI: https://github.com/containers/podman/pull/27001

Podman Creates Temporary File with Insecure Permissions
A flaw was found in Podman. In a Containerfile or Podman, data written to RUN --mount=type=bind mounts during the podman build is not discarded. This issue can lead to files created within the container appearing in the temporary build context directory on the host, leaving the created files accessible.

Podman Improper Certificate Validation; machine missing TLS verification
### Impact
The podman machine init command fails to verify the TLS certificate when downloading the VM images from an OCI registry (which it does by default since 5.0.0) allowing a possible Man In The Middle attack.

### Patches
https://github.com/containers/podman/commit/726b506acc8a00d99f1a3a1357ecf619a1f798c3
Fixed in v5.5.2

### Workarounds
Download the disk image manually via some other tool that verifies the TLS connection. Then pass the local image as file path (podman machine init --image ./somepath)