The runc component used by docker exec
feature of docker allowed
additional container processes to be ptraced by the pid 1 of the
container. This allows the main processes of the container, if running
as root, to gain low-level access to these new processes during
initialization. An attacker can, depending on the nature of the
incoming process, leverage this to elevate access to the host. This
ranges from accessing host content through the file descriptors of the
incoming process to, potentially, a complete container escape by
leveraging memory access or syscall interception (CVE-2016-9962).