CVE-2026-53657
Lima: An arbitrary user in a QEMU VM could gain the root privilege in the VM via the guest agent socket
Summary
### Impact On an instance of Lima running with `qemu` driver, an arbitrary user in the VM could access `/run/lima-guestagent.sock` when the guest agent is enabled. This could result in running an arbitrary command with the root privileges in the VM (**not on the host**), as `lima-guestagent.sock` provides the tunneling service for an arbitrary address, including a Unix socket address for privileged daemons like D-Bus. This vulnerability is not exploitable on `vz` driver, as the guest agent uses vsocks instead of Unix sockets. ### Patches Patched in Lima v2.1.3 (8a45892378d22f40505c31a38f786a07701b6d50) > [!NOTE] > The default user account in the VM can still run an arbitrary command as the root via the guest agent socket. > This is not a vulnerability, as the user can already run an arbitrary command with `sudo` by design. ### Workarounds - On macOS hosts, use `vz` driver instead of `qemu` (`limactl create --vm-type=vz`. Default since v1.0.) - Or, disable the guest agent (`limactl create --plain`)
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected versions | Fixed versions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/lima-vm/lima/v2 | — | 2.1.3 |
Remediation: Upgrade to 2.1.3 or later.
References
Includes data from the GitHub Advisory Database, licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. CVE content reproduced under the CVE Terms of Use; copyright designation © MITRE.
EPSS scores provided by the FIRST.org Exploit Prediction Scoring System.