CVE-2026-54523
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.
1 article across 1 outlet · first covered Jul 17, 2026 · latest Jul 17, 2026
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CVE-2026-54523 (CVSS 9.6): Public PoC Exploit Enables Kyverno Privilege Escalation to Admin in Any Namespacesecurityonline.info · Jul 17, 2026