Vulnerability · Published Oct 26, 2026 · Assigned by kubernetes
CVE-2026-76654Subpath symlinking on Windows nodes permits NTLM coercion
Medium 5.8
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in Kubernetes from Kubernetes. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 37% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
An NTLM coercion vulnerability exists on Windows nodes when the subPath supplied in a pod's volumeMounts is set to a symbolic link that points to an attacker-controlled network share. When a kubelet resolves symlinks, it does not reject a target that resolves to a UNC path. As a result, the kubelet will transparently attempt to authenticate to the share using NTLM. This allows an attacker to obtain the NetNTLMv2 hash of the account under which the kubelet is running. An attacker could then attempt to crack the hash to retrieve the corresponding password or relay it to impersonate the node, if the node is domain-joined.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes | Kubernetes | v1.34.0 – through v1.34.11v1.35.0 – through v1.35.8v1.36.0 – through v1.36.4v1.37.0 – through v1.37.0 |
Weakness: CWE-59 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N