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.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
Advisories
| Source | ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
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.
References
History
Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:15:00 +0000
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| Metrics |
ssvc
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Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:30:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
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| 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 |
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| References |
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| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: GitHub_M
Published:
Updated: 2026-01-27T16:42:49.789Z
Reserved: 2026-01-05T22:30:38.719Z
Link: CVE-2026-22039
Updated: 2026-01-27T16:41:52.472Z
Status : Received
Published: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.097
Modified: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.097
Link: CVE-2026-22039
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
No data.
Github GHSA