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Fencer Intel
critical 10.0

CVE-2026-22039 json

Kyverno Cross-Namespace Privilege Escalation via Policy apiCall

published 9mo ago modified last mo. also BIT-kyverno-2026-22039 , EUVD-2026-4811 , GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 , GO-2026-4381

cvss
10.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 47%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Versions prior to 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 have a critical authorization boundary bypass in namespaced Kyverno Policy apiCall. The resolved `urlPath` is executed using the Kyverno admission controller ServiceAccount, with no enforcement that the request is limited to the policy’s namespace. As a result, any authenticated user with permission to create a namespaced Policy can cause Kyverno to perform Kubernetes API requests using Kyverno’s admission controller identity, targeting any API path allowed by that ServiceAccount’s RBAC. This breaks namespace isolation by enabling cross-namespace reads (for example, ConfigMaps and, where permitted, Secrets) and allows cluster-scoped or cross-namespace writes (for example, creating ClusterPolicies) by controlling the urlPath through context variable substitution. Versions 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 contain a patch for the vulnerability.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/kyverno/kyverno 1.15.3, 1.16.3
  • bitnami kyverno 1.15.3, 1.16.3
  • kyverno kyverno 1.15.3, 1.16.3
  • nirmata kyverno 1.15.3, 1.16.3
  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 15.6 0.0.20260205T172317-150000.1.146.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:0403-1

  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Leap 16.0 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1

Is CVE-2026-22039 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
9mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.58% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 47% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 10.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 9.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
OSV 3.1 9.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/kyverno/kyverno
<1.15.3
>=1.16.0-rc.1, <1.16.3
1.15.3
1.16.3
bitnami kyverno
<1.15.3
>=1.16.0, <1.16.3
1.15.3
1.16.3

Affected products

  • kyverno kyverno

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
  • CWE-918 Server-Side Request Forgery

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.