What is the CVSS score of CVE-2026-53657?

CVE-2026-53657 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.2 (High). CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.2%.

Which versions of Lima are affected by CVE-2026-53657?

Lima (lima-vm) versions before 2.1.3 contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability allowing unprivileged users within guest VMs to escalate to root by exploiting an unprotected socket exposing…. A patch is available.

How to fix or mitigate CVE-2026-53657?

Within 24 hours: Inventory all systems running Lima with QEMU driver and guest agent enabled; identify which VMs contain sensitive workloads or span multiple user access. Within 7 days: Upgrade all affected Lima installations to version 2.1.3 or later; audit whether guest agent is necessary and disable if unused. Within 30 days: Enforce access controls limiting guest VM usage to trusted users; implement audit logging for privilege escalation attempts; review shared VM policies.

Lima CVE-2026-53657

EUVD-2026-42933 HIGH

Incorrect Default Permissions (CWE-276)

2026-07-10 GitHub_M

GHSA-2j9v-p4xj-cjw2

Privilege Escalation Apple Suse Lima

8.2

CVSS 3.1 · Vendor: GitHub_M

Severity by source

Vendor (GitHub_M) PRIMARY

8.2 HIGH

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

vuln.today AI

8.8 HIGH

Description says any 'arbitrary user in the VM' can reach the socket, so PR:L not PR:H; local-only vector, no interaction, and escalation across the agent boundary to root justifies S:C with full CIA impact.

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

4.0 AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

SUSE

HIGH

qualitative

Primary rating from Vendor (GitHub_M).

CVSS VectorVendor: GitHub_M

Attack Vector

Local

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

High

User Interaction

None

Scope

Changed

Confidentiality

High

Integrity

High

Availability

High

Lifecycle Timeline

Patch available

Jul 10, 2026 - 18:01 EUVD

Analysis Generated

Jul 10, 2026 - 17:05 vuln.today

CVE Published

Jul 10, 2026 - 15:42 cve.org

HIGH 8.2

DescriptionCVE.org

Lima launches Linux virtual machines, typically on macOS, for running containerd. Prior to 2.1.3, on an instance of Lima running with the qemu driver, an arbitrary user in the VM could access /run/lima-guestagent.sock when the guest agent is enabled, which could result in running arbitrary commands with root privileges in the VM because the guest agent socket provides tunneling for arbitrary addresses, including Unix socket addresses for privileged daemons like D-Bus. This issue is fixed in version 2.1.3.

AnalysisAI

Local privilege escalation in Lima (lima-vm) before 2.1.3 lets any unprivileged user inside a guest VM reach root when the instance runs the QEMU driver with the guest agent enabled. Because the world-reachable /run/lima-guestagent.sock exposes address tunneling - including Unix sockets for privileged daemons such as D-Bus - an in-guest attacker can proxy to root-owned services and execute arbitrary commands as root. No public exploit identified at time of analysis, and it is not listed in CISA KEV.

Technical ContextAI

Lima provisions lightweight Linux VMs (commonly on macOS) to run containerd/nerdctl and is the engine behind tools like Colima. Its guest agent runs inside the VM and, among other things, brokers port and socket forwarding between host and guest, exposing a control socket at /run/lima-guestagent.sock. The root cause is CWE-276 (Incorrect Default Permissions): that socket is left accessible to arbitrary VM users rather than restricted to root/privileged callers, and the agent's tunneling feature accepts arbitrary target addresses - including Unix socket paths for privileged system daemons like D-Bus - so socket access is effectively equivalent to acting through those root daemons. The single affected package is cpe:2.3:a:lima-vm:lima, with the QEMU driver being the vulnerable deployment mode.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: upgrade Lima to version 2.1.3 or later, which fixes the guest agent socket exposure (fix commits 8a45892378d22f40505c31a38f786a07701b6d50 and b08cae8a670cf916d5da11c48a6de76dabd89678; advisory GHSA-2j9v-p4xj-cjw2). If you cannot upgrade immediately, reduce exposure by not treating the guest as a trust boundary: avoid provisioning additional unprivileged interactive users inside affected Lima VMs, and where feasible disable the guest agent or switch away from the QEMU driver for that instance - noting these break agent-provided port/socket forwarding and may disable QEMU-specific features you rely on. Restricting who can obtain any shell in the guest is the most effective compensating control until 2.1.3 is deployed.