Vulnerability · Published Jan 27, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-22039Kyverno Cross-Namespace Privilege Escalation via Policy apiCall
Critical 10.0
In plain English
A critical-severity privilege mismanagement in kyverno from kyverno. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 48% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official 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.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/kyverno/kyverno | 1.15.3 | GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 |
| Go | github.com/kyverno/kyverno | 1.16.3 | GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 |
| Go | github.com/kyverno/kyverno | 1.15.3, 1.16.3 | GO-2026-4381 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-269, CWE-918 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H