Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 7.7

CVE-2026-23881 json

Kyverno Denial of Service via Context Variable Amplification in Policy Engine

published 9mo ago modified last mo. also BIT-kyverno-2026-23881 , EUVD-2026-4812 , GHSA-r2rj-wwm5-x6mq , GO-2026-4382

cvss
7.7
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 49%
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 unbounded memory consumption in Kyverno's policy engine that allows users with policy creation privileges to cause denial of service by crafting policies that exponentially amplify string data through context variables. 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-2026-23881 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.

Check with Fencer

CISA SSVC

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

Exploit prediction

0.62% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 49% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GHSA-r2rj-wwm5-x6mq referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV 3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/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-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

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.