Podman

This release fixes CVE-2026-94603, where running a checkpoint image via podman run could silently disable all sandboxing, including user-specified security settings, at container creation time. As a breaking change, podman run no longer supports checkpoint images at all, so any workflows relying on podman run with the io.podman.annotations.checkpoint.runtime.name annotation must switch to a different mechanism for restoring checkpoints.

Matters for: Teams using Podman's checkpoint/restore functionality for container migration or fast-restart workflows, especially in rootless or sandboxed deployment environments.

This release fixes CVE-2026-94603, where running a checkpoint image via podman run could silently disable all sandboxing, including user-specified security settings, at container creation time. Because checkpoint images ignore user security configuration and cannot be run safely, podman run no longer supports checkpoint images at all, so any workflow or script that invoked podman run on images with the io.podman.annotations.checkpoint.runtime.name annotation must be changed to use a different mechanism.

Matters for: Teams using Podman's checkpoint/restore functionality in CI pipelines or orchestration scripts that invoke podman run directly on checkpoint images.

Podman 5.8.7 patches CVE-2025-11395, which allowed crafted layer tarballs in podman load or crafted symlinks in podman volume import to overwrite files on the host; it also addresses CVE-2026-79699 and CVE-2026-79705, though these are not believed exploitable via the Podman CLI. This is a non-breaking security update, so no configuration or workflow changes are required.

Matters for: Teams running Podman to load untrusted container images or import volumes from external or third-party sources.

Podman 6.1.2 fixes CVE-2025-11395, where podman load with crafted layer tarballs or podman volume import with crafted symlinks could overwrite files on the host; it also addresses CVE-2026-79699 and CVE-2026-79705, though these are not believed exploitable via the Podman CLI. Buildah, Common, Image, and Storage dependencies were also updated.

Matters for: Teams using Podman to load container images or import volumes from untrusted or third-party sources.

This release fixes CVE-2026-17106, where a crafted tar archive could use malicious links to write files outside the intended extraction directory. It also fixes rootlessport binding failures when specifying both -p 0.0.0.0:... and -p [::]:... and restores correct port forwarding for Podman Machine on WSL.

Matters for: Teams extracting untrusted tar archives inside containers and teams running Podman Machine on Windows via WSL.

Podman v6.0.0 patches a vulnerability that let malicious images leak host environment variables into containers (including via glob matching) and fixes a quadlet install --replace bug that left stale content in replaced files, while also enabling network isolation by default for better Docker compatibility. This is a breaking release: it requires matching updates to Buildah v1.44.0, Skopeo v1.23, Netavark/Aardvark v2.0.0, and common/v0.68.0 configs, drops support for BoltDB (auto-migrated to SQLite), Intel Macs, Windows 10, cgroups v1, iptables, CNI, and slirp4netns, and changes the podman import path, quadlet file layout, volume prune/list filter semantics, and Go bindings.

Matters for: Teams running Podman machine VMs across mixed Hyper-V/WSL or AppleHV/libkrun providers on Windows or Mac, and operators managing rootless Linux hosts still on cgroups v1, iptables, CNI, or slirp4netns.

You can now rename volumes with podman volume rename, restart podman machine VMs directly, ignore missing networks on removal, auto-retry manifest pushes, control image volume mounting via Quadlet's new ImageVolume key, and generate livenessProbe healthchecks from podman generate kube. Because Podman on WSL now requires the new force_port_listen setting in containers.conf for port forwarding to work, and the Compat API deprecates several fields removed in Docker's v1.44 API, WSL configurations and API clients must be updated to match.

Matters for: Teams running rootless Podman on Windows via the WSL provider for port forwarding, and developers integrating tools with Podman's Docker-compatible REST API.

Podman v5.8.4 patches CVE-2026-57231, which allowed a malicious image with malformed Env entries to leak host environment variables into containers, including using a glob operator to leak many variables without knowing their names; it also updates golang.org/x/crypto to v0.53.0 to address CVE-2026-39830 and CVE-2026-42508, and fixes a bug where the remote client's podman save command failed on Linux with -f oci-dir or -f docker-dir arguments.

Matters for: Teams running untrusted or third-party container images in multi-tenant environments where host environment variables must not leak into containers.