CVE-2026-22039: Kyverno Cross-Namespace Privilege Escalation via Policy apiCall

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-22039 is a critical (CVSS 10.0) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in kyverno. EPSS estimates a 0.58% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 47.6% of scored vulnerabilities. 1 public exploit is recorded.

Timeline

1. 27-01-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 27-01-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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.

• CWE-269Improper Privilege ManagementThe product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.
• CWE-918Server-Side Request ForgeryThe web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination.