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Case File

CVE-2026-22039

CRITICAL · CVSS 9.9 EPSS 0.52% Public Exploit

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS (historical backfill) · Published 2026-01-27 · Last synced 2026-08-04

CyberRota Analysis

This is a critical severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.9. It affects Kubernetes. Public exploit code or proof-of-concept references have been detected in its references. Exploitation may require the attacker to be authenticated.

Public Exploit Signal

A public exploit, PoC, GitHub repository or Metasploit reference was detected for this CVE.

Note: these links are listed for security research and verification purposes only.

CVE
CVE-2026-22039
Severity
CRITICAL
CVSS
9.9
EPSS
0.52%
Kubernetes

Original NVD Description

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.

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