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blog/2026-06-16-cve-2026-46448.md

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---
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title: Lacking sanitization of Nova scheduler hints (OSSA-2026-022 / CVE-2026-46448)
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authors: [garloff]
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slug: nova_lacking_scheulder_hints_sanitization_ossa_2026_022
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tags: [security, openstack, nova, cve]
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---
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## The vulnerability
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When talking to the OpenStack Nova Compute API, Users can specify scheduler
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hints, expressing preferences for Server (VM) placement. Users can however
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inject a values `{"_nova_check_type": "rebuild"}` that is only meant to be used
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internally in the rebuild context which causes certain resource checks to be
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skipped. This can cause placement contraints such as host aggregates, AZs, image
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traits to be ignored and cause PCI pass-through resources to not be properly
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mapped. While the assigned quota is still observed, the vulnerability may cause
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exhaustion of resources and confusion of the scheduler (placement) state and
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thus may result in a Denial of Service for certain resource types.
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This issue was reported by Erichen, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese
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Academy of Sciences and was subsequently analyzed and handled by Goutham Pacha Ravi,
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Dan Smith and Sylvain Bauza. It was assigned CVE-2026-46448.
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## Impact on the SCS software ecosystem
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Malevolent authenticated users could use this to schedule VMs on hosts that
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would normally not be accessible to their VMs (e.g. because they are in a
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host aggregate only available to GPU flavors which are manually enabled for
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selected customers only). This could result in resource exhaustion for
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legitimate users and cause the placement accounting to be confused.
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This will mainly affect providers that exposed specialized features via
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special flavors (such as e.g. GPUs) which may be scarce. In particular,
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PCI devices may be assigned without proper accounting in the placement
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service.
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## Embargo
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The issue was reported to the OpenStack Vulnerability Management Team.
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Following coordination with the reporters and upstream developers, the official
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OpenStack Security Advisory
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[OSSA-2026-022](https://security.openstack.org/ossa/OSSA-2026-022.html) was
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published on Tuesday, 2026-06-16, 15:00 UTC.
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## Mitigation and Fixes
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The fix consists in ensuring that internal `_nova_` scheduler hints are properly
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filtered out in the API exposed to users.
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Providers are advised to deploy fixed nova-api containers.
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The SCS ecosystem software providers will provide fixed nova images along with
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update instructions:
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- [OSISM](https://osism.tech/docs/appendix/security/ossa-2026-022) <!--FIXME-->
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- [yaook](https://yaook.cloud/security-advisories-cve-2026-46448/) <!--FIXME-->
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Operators where users may have caused confusion in the placement accounting
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will need to run
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```shell
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nova-manage placement heal_allocations
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```
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to ensure that accounting in the placement service is consistent again.
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## References
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- [OSSA-2026-022 Advisory](https://security.openstack.org/ossa/OSSA-2026-022.html)
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- [Launchpad Bug #2151252](https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/2151252)
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## Thanks
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The author would like to thank the reporters, the OpenStack vulnerability
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management team and the abovementioned maintainers for reporting,
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analyzing, fixing and handling the issue.
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## Sovereign Cloud Stack Security Contact
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SCS security contact is
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[security@scs.community](mailto:security@scs.community), as published on
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[https://sovereigncloudstack.org/.well-known/security.txt](https://sovereigncloudstack.org/.well-known/security.txt).
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## Version history
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- Initial draft, v0.5, 2026-06-16, 13:30 CEST
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- Initial publication, v1.0, 2026-06-16, 17:00 CEST

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