Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessObtain unprivileged shell in guest VM
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DeliveryOpen /run/lima-guestagent.sock
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ExploitRequest tunnel to privileged D-Bus/Unix socket
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ExecutionInvoke privileged daemon method
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ImpactExecute arbitrary commands as root in VM
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V13 - Configuration Default permission hardening
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Privilege Escalation The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Requires a Lima instance running specifically with the QEMU driver AND the guest agent enabled, plus the attacker already having any unprivileged local user account/shell inside the guest VM (AV:L). Exploitation limits: it is not remotely reachable and not usable without prior in-guest access, so it is only relevant where an untrusted party can obtain a foothold in the VM (multi-user VMs, container-to-VM escape, or shared/CI guests); instances using other drivers or with the guest agent disabled are not affected. No user interaction is needed once in-guest access exists. |
| Impact | Signals are moderately consistent but not urgent. CVSS 3.1 is 8.2 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C, full CIA impact) - local vector, low complexity, scope change to root. Note a discrepancy: the vendor vector encodes PR:H, yet the description says 'an arbitrary user in the VM' can access the socket, which implies only low privilege (PR:L) is truly required - this makes real-world exploitability somewhat higher than PR:H suggests, and I independently score it PR:L (see assessed vector). There is no EPSS score, no KEV listing, and no published POC in the provided data, so this is a high-severity local escalation rather than a mass-exploited internet-facing bug. Practical risk concentrates in multi-user guest VMs or scenarios where an attacker already has any unprivileged foothold in the Lima guest; single-user developer laptops face lower marginal risk since the attacker would already control the workload. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker with any unprivileged shell in a Lima QEMU guest (e.g., a compromised container escape to the VM user, or a shared multi-user VM) opens /run/lima-guestagent.sock and requests a tunnel to a privileged Unix socket such as the system D-Bus. Through that root-owned daemon they invoke privileged methods to run commands as root inside the VM, completing local privilege escalation. No public POC is currently identified, but the technique follows directly from the documented tunneling behavior. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Jul 10, 2026
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.
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.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 3 packages in go, euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
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.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
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.
Primary rating from Vendor (GitHub_M).
CVSS VectorVendor: GitHub_M
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.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.
Executive ViewAI
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 privileged daemons. Organizations using Lima with the QEMU driver and guest agent enabled face risk from unauthorized privilege escalation; no public exploit has been identified at time of analysis. Environments running shared VMs across multiple users or containing sensitive workloads require immediate attention.
Apply vendor patch: Lima 2.1.3 or later. Interim mitigations if immediate patching is not possible: disable guest agent if operationally feasible; restrict file permissions on /run/lima-guestagent.sock to prevent unprivileged access; limit guest VM sharing across untrusted users.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Privilege escalation occurs when an attacker leverages flaws in access control mechanisms to gain permissions beyond what they were originally granted.
Same weakness CWE-276 – Incorrect Default Permissions
View allSame technique Privilege Escalation
View allVendor StatusVendor
SUSE
Severity: Important| Product | Status |
|---|---|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.1 | Affected |
EUVD-2026-42933
GHSA-2j9v-p4xj-cjw2
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB