Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Versions prior to 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 have unbounded memory consumption in Kyverno's policy engine that allows users with policy creation privileges to cause denial of service by crafting policies that exponentially amplify string data through context variables. Versions 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 contain a patch for the vulnerability.
Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-r2rj-wwm5-x6mq Kyverno Denial of Service via Context Variable Amplification in Policy Engine
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': 'partial'}, '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 unbounded memory consumption in Kyverno's policy engine that allows users with policy creation privileges to cause denial of service by crafting policies that exponentially amplify string data through context variables. Versions 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 contain a patch for the vulnerability.
Title Kyverno Denial of Service via Context Variable Amplification in Policy Engine
Weaknesses CWE-770
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-01-27T16:33:03.342Z

Reserved: 2026-01-16T21:02:02.900Z

Link: CVE-2026-23881

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-01-27T16:32:55.203Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.733

Modified: 2026-01-27T17:16:12.733

Link: CVE-2026-23881

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses