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.
Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 Kyverno Cross-Namespace Privilege Escalation via Policy apiCall
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'total'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title Kyverno Cross-Namespace Privilege Escalation via Policy apiCall
Weaknesses CWE-269
CWE-918
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 10, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-01-27T16:42:49.789Z

Reserved: 2026-01-05T22:30:38.719Z

Link: CVE-2026-22039

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-01-27T16:41:52.472Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.097

Modified: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.097

Link: CVE-2026-22039

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses