CVE-2026-22039

Published Jan 27, 2026

Last updated a month ago

CVSS critical 9.9
Container Security

Overview

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.
Source
security-advisories@github.com
NVD status
Analyzed
Products
kyverno

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Secondary
Base score
9.9
Impact score
6
Exploitability score
3.1
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity
CRITICAL

Weaknesses

security-advisories@github.com
CWE-269

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations