CVE-2026-53657
Local privilege escalation in Lima VMs via guest agent socket allows root command execution.
Is CVE-2026-53657 being exploited?
Not confirmed. CVE-2026-53657 does not appear in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which records only exploitation that has been observed and reported publicly. That is evidence of absence of a report, not evidence the flaw is unattacked. EPSS currently estimates a 0.20% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How severe is CVE-2026-53657?
CVE-2026-53657 is rated High with a CVSS score of 8.2. Severity describes how bad exploitation would be, not how likely it is: pair it with exploitation evidence before deciding what to patch first.
Is there a patch for CVE-2026-53657?
Yes. A fix has been recorded for CVE-2026-53657. The vendor advisory is the authority on the exact fixed version — apply it from there rather than from a summary.
What does CVE-2026-53657 affect?
CVE-2026-53657 affects Lima versions prior to 2.1.3 (qemu driver with guest agent enabled), Linux VMs launched by Lima on macOS. Confirm the exact affected versions against the vendor advisory before deciding you are exposed.
What should I do about CVE-2026-53657?
Upgrade to Lima 2.1.3+ or disable the guest agent until patched.
Exploitation status reflects CISA's KEV catalog as we last synced it. Check the catalog directly.
Local user in a Lima VM can access guest agent socket to tunnel to privileged Unix sockets (e.g., D-Bus) and execute arbitrary commands as root in the VM.
Immediate action required
- affected< 2.1.3
As published in the CVE Program record. A version outside these ranges is not a statement that it is unaffected — vendors sometimes understate a range, and distribution-backported builds carry upstream numbers that do not reflect what was patched into them.