Vulnerability · Published Feb 20, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-27111Kargo has Missing Authorization Vulnerabilities in Approval & Promotion REST API Endpoints
Medium 5.3
In plain English
A medium-severity missing authorization in kargo from akuity. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 11% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Kargo manages and automates the promotion of software artifacts. From v1.9.0 to v1.9.2, Kargo's authorization model includes a promote verb -- a non-standard Kubernetes "dolphin verb" -- that gates the ability to advance Freight through a promotion pipeline. This verb exists to separate the ability to manage promotion-related resources from the ability to trigger promotions, enabling fine-grained access control over what is often a sensitive operation. The promote verb is correctly enforced in Kargo's legacy gRPC API. However, three endpoints in the newer REST API omit this check, relying only on standard Kubernetes RBAC for the underlying resource operations (patch on freights/status or create on promotions). This permits users who hold those standard permissions -- but who were deliberately not granted promote -- to bypass the intended authorization boundary. The affected endpoints are /v1beta1/projects/{project}/freight/{freight}/approve, /v1beta1/projects/{project}/stages/{stage}/promotions, and /v1beta1/projects/{project}/stages/{stage}/promotions/downstream. This vulnerability is fixed in v1.9.3.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/akuity/kargo | 1.9.3 | GHSA-5vvm-67pj-72g4 |
| Go | github.com/akuity/kargo | 1.9.3 | GO-2026-4515 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-862 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N