Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a case of an incomplete patch for a beforehand addressed safety flaw impacting the NVIDIA Container Toolkit that, if efficiently exploited, may put delicate information in danger.
The unique vulnerability CVE-2024-0132 (CVSS rating: 9.0) is a Time-of-Examine Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) vulnerability that would result in a container escape assault and permit for unauthorized entry to the underlying host.
Whereas this flaw was resolved by NVIDIA in September 2024, a brand new evaluation by Pattern Micro has revealed the repair to be incomplete and that there additionally exists a associated efficiency flaw affecting Docker on Linux that would lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) situation.
“These points may allow attackers to flee container isolation, entry delicate host sources, and trigger extreme operational disruptions,” Pattern Micro researcher Abdelrahman Esmail stated in a brand new report revealed at the moment.
The truth that the TOCTOU vulnerability persists signifies that a specifically crafted container might be abused to entry the host file system and execute arbitrary instructions with root privileges. The flaw impacts model 1.17.4 if the characteristic allow-cuda-compat-libs-from-container is explicitly enabled.
“The particular flaw exists inside the mount_files operate,” Pattern Micro stated. “The problem outcomes from the shortage of correct locking when performing operations on an object. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code within the context of the host.”
Nevertheless, for this privilege escalation to work, the attacker should have already obtained the flexibility to execute code inside a container.
The shortcoming has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2025-23359 (CVSS rating: 9.0), which was beforehand flagged by cloud safety agency Wiz as additionally a bypass for CVE-2024-0132 again in February 2025. It has been addressed in model 1.17.4.
The cybersecurity firm stated it additionally found a efficiency concern in the course of the evaluation of the CVE-2024-0132 that would doubtlessly result in a DoS vulnerability on the host machine. It impacts Docker cases on Linux techniques.
“When a brand new container is created with a number of mounts configured utilizing (bind-propagation=shared), a number of guardian/little one paths are established. Nevertheless, the related entries will not be eliminated within the Linux mount desk after container termination,” Esmail stated.
“This results in a fast and uncontrollable development of the mount desk, exhausting out there file descriptors (fd). Ultimately, Docker is unable to create new containers as a consequence of fd exhaustion. This excessively massive mount desk results in an enormous efficiency concern, stopping customers from connecting to the host (i.e., by way of SSH).”
To mitigate the difficulty, it is suggested to observe the Linux mount desk for irregular development, restrict Docker API entry to approved personnel, implement sturdy entry management insurance policies, and conduct periodic audits of container-to-host filesystem bindings, quantity mounts, and socket connections.
