Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. Versions 4.8.0 through 5.8.1 contain a command injection vulnerability in the HyperV machine backend in pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go, where the VM image path is inserted into a PowerShell double-quoted string without sanitization, allowing $() subexpression injection. Because PowerShell evaluates subexpressions inside double-quoted strings before executing the outer command, an attacker who can control the VM image path through a crafted machine name or image directory can execute arbitrary PowerShell commands with the privileges of the Podman process. On typical Windows installations this means SYSTEM-level code execution, and only Windows is affected as the code is exclusive to the HyperV backend. This issue has been patched in version 5.8.2.
https://github.com/containers/podman/security/advisories/GHSA-hc8w-h2mf-hp59
https://github.com/containers/podman/commit/571c842bd357ee626019ea97d030fb772fc654ed
Published: 2026-04-14
Updated: 2026-04-14
Base Score: 7.5
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
Severity: High
Base Score: 9.8
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity: Critical
Base Score: 7.1
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Severity: High