CVE-2026-54523
Received
Received - Intake
Cross-Namespace Resource Creation in Kyverno
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-54523, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-26
Last updated on: 2026-08-26
Assigner: GitHub, Inc.
Description
Description
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. From 1.18.0 until 1.18.2, the NamespacedMutatingPolicy CEL compiler exposes the generator library to matchConditions, allowing a namespace-scoped policy to invoke generator.apply(namespace, resources) with an arbitrary target namespace. The validation in pkg/cel/policies/mpol/validate.go checks that the policy compiles but does not enforce namespace scope, and GenerateResources in pkg/cel/libs/context.go does not reject the cross-namespace target. A user who can create NamespacedMutatingPolicy objects in one namespace can cause the admission controller, operating with cluster-wide privileges, to create ConfigMaps, NetworkPolicies, Secrets, RoleBindings, and other resources in another namespace, enabling unauthorized modification and potential privilege escalation. This issue is fixed in version 1.18.2.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| kyverno | kyverno | From 1.18.0 (inc) to 1.18.2 (inc) |
| kyverno | kyverno | 1.18.2 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-862 | The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action. |