CVE-2026-22039
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.
EPSS 0.03% · 7.9th percentile
Risk Scores
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Bitnami | kyverno | 1.16.0, 0 |
| Bitnami | kyverno | 0, 1.16.0 |
Exploit Intelligence
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 (nist-nvd)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- CIRCL seen: CVE-2026-22039 (circl-sighting)
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/e0ba4de4f1e0ca325066d5095db51aec45b1407b (circl)
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/eba60fa856c781bcb9c3be066061a3df03ae4e3e (circl)
…and 18 more exploits
Timeline
- Jan 27, 2026 CVE Published
- Jan 27, 2026 PoC Published
- Jan 27, 2026 PoC Published
- Jan 28, 2026 EPSS Score
- Jan 29, 2026 CVE Updated
- Jan 30, 2026 EPSS Score
- Jan 30, 2026 Security Advisory
- Feb 2, 2026 EPSS Score
- Feb 4, 2026 EPSS Score
- Feb 5, 2026 PoC Published
- Feb 7, 2026 EPSS Score
- Feb 9, 2026 EPSS Score
References
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/e0ba4de4f1e0ca325066d5095db51aec45b1407b url
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/eba60fa856c781bcb9c3be066061a3df03ae4e3e url
- https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GHSA-8p9x-46gm-qfx2 url
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-22039 url