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Fencer Vulns
high 8.2

CVE-2023-26484 json

On a compromised KubeVirt node, the virt-handler service account can be used to modify all node specs

published 2023-03-15 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-cp96-jpmq-xrr2 , EUVD-2023-0987

cvss
8.2
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 49%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • kubevirt SLE Module for Containers 15 SP4, SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 +2 more 0.54.0-150400.3.13.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2023:1967-1

  • kubevirt1.8 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.8.3-1.1
  • kubevirt-1.8 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.8.3-1.1
  • kubevirt openSUSE Tumbleweed 0.59.0-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11091-1openSUSE-SU-2026:11057-1openSUSE-SU-2024:12792-1

  • kubevirt CBL-Mariner 2.0 0.59.0-20
  • kubevirt Azure Linux 3.0 1.2.0-1

azure linux advisories AZL-25673AZL-34902

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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-2023-26484 updated cvss 8.2

kubevirt: Incorrect Authorization

  • Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 kubevirt
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 container-native-virtualization/kubemacpool, container-native-virtualization/kubemacpool-rhel9, container-native-virtualization/cluster-network-addons-operator-rhel9
    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
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.61% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 49% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 8.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
GitHub 3.1 8.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go kubevirt.io/kubevirt
<=0.59.0
 no fix listed

Affected products

  • kubevirt kubevirt

Classification

Weakness

References

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.