CVE-2023-26484

HIGH

KubeVirt <0.59.0 - Privilege Escalation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

KubeVirt is a virtual machine management add-on for Kubernetes. In versions 0.59.0 and prior, if a malicious user has taken over a Kubernetes node where virt-handler (the KubeVirt node-daemon) is running, the virt-handler service account can be used to modify all node specs. This can be misused to lure-in system-level-privileged components which can, for instance, read all secrets on the cluster, or can exec into pods on other nodes. This way, a compromised node can be used to elevate privileges beyond the node until potentially having full privileged access to the whole cluster. The simplest way to exploit this, once a user could compromise a specific node, is to set with the virt-handler service account all other nodes to unschedulable and simply wait until system-critical components with high privileges appear on its node. No patches are available as of time of publication. As a workaround, gatekeeper users can add a webhook which will block the `virt-handler` service account to modify the spec of a node.

References (2)

Core 2
Core References
Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/issues/9109

Scores

CVSS v3 8.2
EPSS 0.0061
EPSS Percentile 44.7%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact total

Details

CWE
CWE-863
Status published
Products (2)
kubevirt/kubevirt < 0.59.0
kubevirt.io/kubevirt 0Go
Published Mar 15, 2023
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026