Kyverno versions 1.17.0 up to (but not including) 1.19.2 contain a critical privilege escalation flaw: a namespace-scoped tenant can get Kyverno's cluster-wide background controller to change RBAC and other resources in namespaces that belong to other tenants.
What Is It
CVE-2026-122313 is a privilege escalation vulnerability (CWE-269) in Kyverno's NamespacedMutatingPolicy. The CEL output of targetMatchConstraints.expression is not checked against the policy's namespace. As a result, a tenant who can only create policies in their own namespace can name a target in a different namespace, such as another tenant's RoleBinding.
Kyverno's background controller runs cluster-wide and then applies the mutation to that target. According to the NVD description, an attacker can use this to add their own subjects to RoleBindings, or to change Roles, NetworkPolicies and ConfigMaps in other namespaces.
Why It Matters
- CVSS 3.1: 9.9 CRITICAL (
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H) - CVSS 4.0: 9.4 CRITICAL
The attacker needs only low privileges and no user interaction. The scope is Changed, so a tenant who controls one namespace can affect resources well beyond it. In multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters that rely on namespaces for isolation, this undermines the boundary between tenants. Changes to RoleBindings and Roles give an attacker a direct path to more access. Changes to NetworkPolicies can remove network segmentation, and changes to ConfigMaps can alter how other tenants' workloads behave.
Exploitation status: This CVE has no entry in the supplied CISA KEV data, so active exploitation is not confirmed at this time. NVD lists the record as "Awaiting Analysis". It was published on 2026-11-05.
What's Vulnerable
- Product: Kyverno (
pkg:golang/github.com/kyverno/kyverno) - Affected: 1.17.0 up to but not including 1.19.2
- Unaffected: 1.19.2
The highest-risk environments are clusters where namespace-scoped users are allowed to create NamespacedMutatingPolicy resources.
Patch Status
The fix is in Kyverno 1.19.2, so operators running 1.17.0 through 1.19.1 should upgrade to it. Because no CISA KEV entry exists for this CVE, there is no CISA required action or due date. After upgrading, check RoleBindings, Roles, NetworkPolicies and ConfigMaps across tenant namespaces for changes you did not expect. Upstream details are in the GitHub Security Advisory linked below.