CVE-2026-42306: Docker Engine Security Vulnerability (CVSS 7.2)

The MLX inference backend in Docker Model Runner on macOS uses the MLX-LM library, which unconditionally imports and executes arbitrary Python files from model directories via the model_file configuration field in config.json. When a model's config.json specifies a model_file pointing to a Python file, MLX-LM uses importlib to load and execute it with no trust_remote_code gate or equivalent safety check. The MLX backend runs without sandboxing, resulting in arbitrary code execution on the Docker host as the Docker Desktop user. Any container on the Docker network can trigger this by calling the model-runner.docker.internal API to pull a malicious model from an attacker-controlled OCI registry and request inference.

The vllm-metal inference backend in Docker Model Runner on macOS unconditionally sets trust_remote_code=True when loading model tokenizers, and runs without sandboxing. This causes transformers.AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained() to import and execute arbitrary Python files included in any model pulled from an OCI registry, resulting in arbitrary code execution on the Docker host as the Docker Desktop user when inference is triggered. Any container on the Docker network can trigger this by calling the model-runner.docker.internal API to pull a malicious model and request inference.

Moby is an open source container framework. Prior to version 29.3.1, a security vulnerability has been detected that allows attackers to bypass authorization plugins (AuthZ). This issue has been patched in version 29.3.1.

Docker CLI for Windows searches for plugin binaries in C:\ProgramData\Docker\cli-plugins, a directory that does not exist by default. A low-privileged attacker can create this directory and place malicious CLI plugin binaries (docker-compose.exe, docker-buildx.exe, etc.) that are executed when a victim user opens Docker Desktop or invokes Docker CLI plugin features, and allow privilege-escalation if the docker CLI is executed as a privileged user. This issue affects Docker CLI: through 29.1.5 and Windows binaries acting as a CLI-plugin manager using the github.com/docker/cli/cli-plugins/manager https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/docker/cli@v29.1.5+incompatible/cli-plugins/manager  package, such as Docker Compose. This issue does not impact non-Windows binaries, and projects not using the plugin-manager code.

Flatpak is a Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework. Prior to 1.16.4, the Flatpak portal accepts paths in the sandbox-expose options which can be app-controlled symlinks pointing at arbitrary paths. Flatpak run mounts the resolved host path in the sandbox. This gives apps access to all host files and can be used as a primitive to gain code execution in the host context. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.16.4.

Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. A bug in the fix for CVE-2024-27297 allowed for arbitrary overwrites of files writable by the Nix process orchestrating the builds (typically the Nix daemon running as root in multi-user installations) by following symlinks during fixed-output derivation output registration. This affects sandboxed Linux builds - sandboxed macOS builds are unaffected. The location of the temporary output used for the output copy was located inside the build chroot. A symlink, pointing to an arbitrary location in the filesystem, could be created by the derivation builder at that path. During output registration, the Nix process (running in the host mount namespace) would follow that symlink and overwrite the destination with the derivation's output contents. In multi-user installations, this allows all users able to submit builds to the Nix daemon (allowed-users - defaulting to all users) to gain root privileges by modifying sensitive files. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.34.5, 2.33.4, 2.32.7, 2.31.4, 2.30.4, 2.29.3, and 2.28.6.