CVE-2026-42541
Kubewarden: RBAC Reconnaissance via unchecked can_i host capability call
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- GitHub_M
Description
Kubewarden is a policy engine for Kubernetes. Prior to , An attacker with privileged AdmissionPolicy or AdmissionPolicyGroup create permissions (which isn't the default) can craft a policy that makes use of the can_i host callback. The callback issues a SubjectAccessReview (SAR) requests to enumerate RBAC permissions of any user or service account across the cluster. can_i does not perform that check to enforce the context-aware allow-list and forwards the request directly to the callback handler, which executes a real SubjectAccessReview using policy-server privileges. This creates a policy-level authorization gap: can_i is effectively usable even when the policy has no context-aware resource grant. This is an information disclosure / reconnaissance issue, and not direct workload data exfiltration. The attacker learns permission information, such as whether specific service accounts can "get secrets", "create pods", or "bind clusterroles" in chosen namespaces. This vulnerability is fixed in .
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Medium4.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | Medium4.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.17% · top 93% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 4.3.
Weakness
Affected products
kubewarden · kubewarden-controller
- affected < 1.35.0
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/kubewarden/kubewarden-controllerGHSA-wqcw-g35j-j578 (opens in a new tab)
References (1)
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-wqcw-g35j-j578 (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-42541)Record last updated .