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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-49238: Canonical Multipass · Path Traversal

Affects Canonical MultipassSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 8.4 High : upgrade to 1.16.3 soon.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 11:52 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
8.4High
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 43% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch
Available – fixed in 1.16.3
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 28 May 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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 30 Oct 2026.

What to do

Upgrade Multipass and canonical/multipass to 1.16.3.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
CanonicalMultipassAffected
  • <1.16.3
Fixed in
  • 1.16.3
GitHubcanonical/multipasspkg:github/canonical/multipassOther threatsAffected
  • <1.16.3
Fixed in
  • 1.16.3

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

The vulnerability affects Multipass versions before 1.16.3, so upgrading to version 1.16.3 or later is expected to address the issue once the vendor releases the fix. Until then, restrict root access inside guest VMs and monitor for suspicious activity related to SFTP server interactions. Avoid running untrusted code with root privileges inside guest VMs.

Description

An issue was discovered in Canonical Multipass before version 1.16.3. The host-side SFTP server component (sshfs_server), which executes with root privileges on the host, contains a path containment bypass vulnerability within its validate_path function in src/sshfs_mount/sftp_server.cpp. The function performs a plain string prefix comparison on requested paths without path separator validation or dot-dot (..) normalization. A local attacker with root privileges inside a guest virtual machine can bypass the FUSE layer by injecting raw SFTP frames (such as an SSH_FXP_OPEN request) directly into the sshfs_server process stdin/stdout pipes via procfs. By supplying a path containing directory traversal sequences that match the allowed mount prefix, the attacker can force the host-side root process to resolve the traversal and open files outside the designated mount boundary. This allows a guest-side user to read arbitrary files on the host filesystem, resulting in a virtual machine escape.

References

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