Incus: Nil Dereferences on Restore via Malformed YAML

Summary

Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Prior to version 7.0.0, backup.GetInfo() trusts the inline backup/index.yaml config when present and only falls back to parsing the legacy backup/container/backup.yaml file if result.Config == nil. As a result, an archive can carry a valid inline config that passes the initial import preflight while also carrying a malformed legacy backup/container/backup.yaml file that is reparsed later from the restored file system. ParseConfigYamlFile() accepts YAML documents with no container section, and multiple downstream consumers then dereference. Container without checking for nil. Confirmed examples in the instance restore and import flow include backup.UpdateInstanceConfig() and internalImportFromBackup(). An authenticated user with permission to import instance backups may be able to crash the Incus daemon with a crafted backup archive whose inline backup/index.yaml is valid but whose extracted legacy backup.yaml omits container. The crash occurs in the restore path after archive extraction has begun. This issue has been patched in version 7.0.0.

Timeline

1. May 7, 2026, 1:08 PM UTCCVE published
2. May 7, 2026, 1:45 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. May 7, 2026, 1:45 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• lxc incus

  fixed in 7.0.0

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

  through 6.23.0

• github.com/lxc/incusGo

  All versions

• github.com/lxc/incus/v6Go

  All versions

References 2