Incus out-of-bounds panic in snapshot metadata handling allows denial of service

Summary

Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. In versions before 7.0.0, missing validation logic in the storage volume import logic allows an authenticated user with access to the storage volume feature to cause the Incus daemon to crash. The backup restore subsystem contains an out-of-bounds panic vulnerability caused by an invalid bounds check when indexing snapshot metadata arrays, and the same flawed pattern also appears in the migration path. When iterating through physical snapshots provided in a backup archive, the loop uses the index to look up corresponding metadata in the parsed `Config.Snapshots` and `Config.VolumeSnapshots` slices. The guard condition `len(slice) >= i-1` is incorrect because it can still evaluate to true when the subsequent slice[i] access is out of bounds. An attacker can submit a backup archive that contains physical snapshot directories while supplying a tampered `index.yaml` with an empty or truncated snapshot metadata array, causing the daemon to index beyond the end of the metadata slice and crash. Repeated use of this issue can be used to keep Incus offline, causing a denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 7.0.0.

Timeline

1. May 6, 2026, 8:40 PM UTCCVE published
2. May 7, 2026, 1:52 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

3. May 7, 2026, 1:52 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• lxc incus

  fixed in 7.0.0

• github.com/lxc/incus/v6/cmd/incusdGo

  fixed in 7.0.0

• github.com/lxc/incusGo

  All versions

• github.com/lxc/incus/v6Go

  All versions

• github.com/lxc/incus/v7Go

  fixed in 7.0.0

References 2