CVE-2026-54523

critical

Assigned by CNA: github_m

Published 2026-08-26 · Modified 2026-08-26

Discuss on Community Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

9.6

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

9.6

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

96%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-862

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.