VulnerabilityPublished 25 Jun 2025

CVE-2025-52890: lxc incus · Incorrect Authorization

Affects lxc incusSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 8.1 High.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 09:08 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

8.1High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 13% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Adjacent
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: None
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Adjacent: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack, but the attack is limited at the protocol level to a logically adjacent topology. This can mean an attack must be launched from the same shared physical (e.g., Bluetooth or IEEE 802.11) or logical (e.g., local IP subnet) network, or from within a secure or otherwise limited administrative domain (e.g., MPLS, secure VPN to an administrative network zone).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 25 Jun 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

1. Immediate upgrade: Organizations should upgrade Incus to a version later than 6.13 where the patch (commit 254dfd2483ab8de39b47c2258b7f1cf0759231c8) has been applied. If an official patched release is not yet available, consider applying the patch manually after thorough testing. 2. Network segmentation: Implement strict network segmentation and isolate bridge networks to limit the scope of potential ARP spoofing attacks. Avoid sharing bridges among tenants or critical workloads. 3. Privilege minimization: Restrict high privilege access within containers and VMs to trusted administrators only, reducing the risk of privilege escalation leading to exploitation. 4. Monitoring and detection: Deploy network monitoring tools capable of detecting ARP spoofing and anomalous MAC/IP address changes on bridges. Use IDS/IPS solutions tuned for container and VM environments. 5. Harden nftables rules: Review and harden nftables configurations to enforce strict filtering policies beyond Incus defaults, ensuring that MAC and IP filtering cannot be bypassed. 6. Incident response readiness: Prepare incident response plans to quickly isolate affected containers/VMs and bridges if suspicious activity is detected. 7. Vendor engagement: Maintain communication with the Incus vendor/project for timely updates and security advisories.

Description

Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. When using an ACL on a device connected to a bridge, Incus versions 6.12 and 6.13generates nftables rules that partially bypass security options `security.mac_filtering`, `security.ipv4_filtering` and `security.ipv6_filtering`. This can lead to ARP spoofing on the bridge and to fully spoof another VM/container on the same bridge. Commit 254dfd2483ab8de39b47c2258b7f1cf0759231c8 contains a patch for the issue.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-52890 can be significant, especially for those relying on Incus for container and VM management in cloud, hosting, or enterprise data center environments. The ability to bypass MAC and IP filtering and perform ARP spoofing within a bridge can lead to unauthorized interception of sensitive data, disruption of network services, and potential lateral movement between virtualized workloads. This undermines network segmentation and isolation guarantees critical for compliance with GDPR and other data protection regulations. Organizations running multi-tenant environments or critical infrastructure services on Incus-managed containers or VMs may face confidentiality breaches and availability outages. The requirement for high privileges to exploit the vulnerability means that initial compromise or insider threat scenarios are likely prerequisites, but once exploited, the attacker can compromise other tenants or services on the same bridge. This could lead to data leakage, service disruption, and increased risk of further compromise. Given the growing adoption of containerization and virtualization in European IT infrastructures, this vulnerability poses a tangible risk to cloud service providers, financial institutions, telecommunications, and government sectors.

CWE-863Incorrect Authorization (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #17OWASP Top 10 A01:2025: Broken Access Control (opens in a new tab)
The product performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action, but it does not correctly perform the check.
Architecture and Design
Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that access control checks are performed related to the business logic. These checks may be different than the access control checks that are applied to more generic resources such as files, connections, processes, memory, and database records.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Authorization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.3.8 (opens in a new tab)
V13.4.2 (opens in a new tab)
V7.2.2 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 25 Jun 2025, 17:05 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-863

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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