Privilege Escalation in kOps using GCE/GCP Provider in Gossip Mode

published 2023-10-11 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-8gwj-m6vh-2g6j , GO-2023-2125 , EUVD-2023-2699

cvss: 8.0; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.6%; EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 50%
public exploits: 0; none known

Privilege Escalation in kOps using GCE/GCP Provider in Gossip Mode.

Patch / fix

fixed in 2

go k8s.io/kops 1.25.4, 1.26.2
Kubernetes kops 1.25.3, 1.25.4, 1.26.2

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-1943 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 8.0

kubernetes/kops: Privilege Escalation in kOps using GCE/GCP Provider in Gossip Mode

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift, openshift-clients, openshift-kubelet, openshift-hyperkube, openshift-kube-apiserver, openshift-kube-scheduler, +2 more
not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: total
Assessed: 2 y ago (2024-09-18)

Exploit prediction

0.64% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 50% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	8.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	8.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub	3.1	8.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
go	k8s.io/kops	<1.25.4 >=1.26.0, <1.26.2	1.25.4 1.26.2

Affected products

Kubernetes kops

Classification

Weakness

CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

References

github.com /kubernetes/kops/issues/15539
issue-tracking, web
groups.google.com /g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/yrCE1x89oaU
mailing-list, web
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2023-1943
advisory
github.com /kubernetes/kops
package
github.com /advisories/GHSA-8gwj-m6vh-2g6j
advisory

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary