Podman is a tool for managing OCI containers and pods. Versions 4.8.0 through 5.8.1 contain a command injection vulnerability in the HyperV machine backend in pkg/machine/hyperv/stubber.go, where the VM image path is inserted into a PowerShell double-quoted string without sanitization, allowing $() subexpression injection. Because PowerShell evaluates subexpressions inside double-quoted strings before executing the outer command, an attacker who can control the VM image path through a crafted machine name or image directory can execute arbitrary PowerShell commands with the privileges of the Podman process. On typical Windows installations this means SYSTEM-level code execution, and only Windows is affected as the code is exclusive to the HyperV backend. This issue has been patched in version 5.8.2.

Podman Desktop is a graphical tool for developing on containers and Kubernetes. Prior to 1.26.2, an unauthenticated HTTP server exposed by Podman Desktop allows any network attacker to remotely trigger denial-of-service conditions and extract sensitive information. By abusing missing connection limits and timeouts, an attacker can exhaust file descriptors and kernel memory, leading to application crash or full host freeze. Additionally, verbose error responses disclose internal paths and system details (including usernames on Windows), aiding further exploitation. The issue requires no authentication or user interaction and is exploitable over the network. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.26.2.