The vulnerability CVE-2026-96577 affects the oc-mirror tool used in the Red Hat Assisted Installer for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 2. During mirroring operations, the local cache registry is exposed on all network interfaces without authentication or encryption, rather than being restricted to the local system. This exposure enables an unauthenticated attacker on a network adjacent to the target to connect to the registry service and manipulate container images by pushing malicious content, deleting cached images, or accessing mirrored data.

An unauthenticated attacker on an adjacent network can exploit this vulnerability to push malicious container images, delete cached images, or access mirrored content without authorization. This could lead to integrity compromise of container images used in deployments, potentially resulting in the execution of tampered or malicious containers. The confidentiality of mirrored content is also at risk. Availability impact is not indicated.

Patch status is not yet confirmed — check the vendor advisory at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-96577 for current remediation guidance. Until a fix is applied, restrict network access to the local cache registry to trusted hosts only, for example by firewalling or network segmentation, to prevent unauthorized access from adjacent networks.