CVE-2023-30549 — Apptainer is an open source container platform for Linux

Apptainer is an open source container platform for Linux. There is an ext4 use-after-free flaw that is exploitable through versions of Apptainer < 1.1.0 and installations that include apptainer-suid < 1.1.8 on older operating systems where that CVE has not been patched. Tha

01What is this vulnerability?

Apptainer is an open source container platform for Linux. There is an ext4 use-after-free flaw that is exploitable through versions of Apptainer < 1.1.0 and installations that include apptainer-suid < 1.1.8 on older operating systems where that CVE has not been patched. That includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Debian 10 buster (unless the linux-5.10 package is installed), Ubuntu 18.04 bionic and…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
apptainer	apptainer	< 1.1.8

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-03-05T19:03:47.559Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/security/advisories/GHSA-j4rf-7357-f4cg
• github.com — https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/commit/5a4964f5ba9c8d89a0e353b97f51fd6076…
• github.com — https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/2220eaf90992c11d888fe771055d4de3303
• github.com — https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/4f04351888a83e595571de672e0a4a8b74f
• access.redhat.com — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2022-1184
• github.com — https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/releases/tag/v1.1.8
• lwn.net — https://lwn.net/Articles/932136/
• lwn.net — https://lwn.net/Articles/932137/
• security-tracker.debian.org — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2022-1184
• sylabs.io — https://sylabs.io/2023/04/response-to-cve-2023-30549/
• ubuntu.com — https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-1184
• www.suse.com — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-1184.html
• security.gentoo.org — https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202311-13