IncusApplication · Linuxcontainers

CVE-2026-33711

HIGH · 7.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-03-26
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 6.23.0 or later.
See remediation →
80/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Incus provides an API to retrieve VM screenshots. That API relies on the use of a temporary file for QEMU to write the screenshot to which is then picked up and sent to the user prior to deletion. As versions prior to 6.23.0 use predictable paths under /tmp for this, an attacker with local access to the system can abuse this mechanism by creating their own symlinks ahead of time. On the vast majority of Linux systems, this will result in a "Permission denied" error when requesting a screenshot. That's because the Linux kernel has a security feature designed to block such attacks, `protected_symlinks`. On the rare systems with this purposefully disabled, it's then possible to trick Incus intro truncating and altering the mode and permissions of arbitrary files on the filesystem, leading to a potential denial of service or possible local privilege escalation. Version 6.23.0 fixes the issue.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
IncusApplication
Affected:< 6.23.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 6.23.0 or later
Fixed in 6.23.0
Recommended fix High confidence

6.23.0

  1. 1. Check the current installed version of Incus using 'incus version' or your system's package manager
  2. 2. Upgrade Incus to version 6.23.0 or later
  3. 3. For package manager installations: use 'apt update && apt install incus' (Debian/Ubuntu), 'dnf upgrade incus' (Fedora/RHEL), or 'zypper update incus' (SUSE)
  4. 4. For snap installations: use 'snap refresh incus'
  5. 5. For source installations: pull the latest release from the Incus GitHub repository
  6. 6. Verify the upgrade was successful by running 'incus version' and confirming the version is 6.23.0 or higher
  7. 7. Restart the Incus service if necessary using 'systemctl restart incus' or 'service incus restart'

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-33711 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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