Podman EUVD-2026-58187

A flaw was found in Podman 5.8.x. The 'podman quadlet install --replace' command opens the existing destination file with O_CREATE|O_WRONLY but omits O_TRUNC. When the initial reflink copy attempt fails (common on non-reflink-capable filesystems including many RHEL default XFS configurations), the fallback in ReflinkOrCopy uses io.Copy which performs a non-truncating write. If the original Quadlet is larger than the new Quadlet, the file is not truncated and content from the original is preserved. The command completes with no warning.

There is no risk of information leakage as the user already had access to the Quadlet in order to replace it, and in most cases, this would only lead to invalid Quadlet files (see https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/issues/29013). However, security-related options from the end of the old Quadlet could be included in the new Quadlet, and if the truncation resulted in a valid Quadlet file, this could result in undesirable behavior. For example, running podman quadlet install --replace to remove a single line from the end of a Quadlet - including security-sensitive content, like AddCapability - will fail, and the option will continue to be used. Further, with Volume Quadlets, this can include additional mounts which can cause content to be unintentionally exposed into containers. If, later, the image is updated then compromised content might be leaked to an attacker.

The vulnerable code paths are in pkg/domain/infra/abi/quadlet.go (lines 338-360, O_CREATE|O_WRONLY without O_TRUNC) and vendor/go.podman.io/storage/pkg/fileutils/reflink_linux.go (lines 12-19, non-truncating io.Copy fallback).

Podman 5.8.x on Linux is confirmed affected, specifically when Quadlet files reside on filesystems that do not support reflinking - this includes RHEL default XFS configurations without the reflink mount option. The vulnerable logic is in two source files: pkg/domain/infra/abi/quadlet.go (lines 338-360) and vendor/go.podman.io/storage/pkg/fileutils/reflink_linux.go (lines 12-19). No CPE strings were included in the provided data. Versions of Podman outside the 5.8.x branch are not confirmed affected. The Red Hat advisory is at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-19730 and the upstream GitHub issue tracking the bug is at https://github.com/podman-container-tools/podman/issues/29013.