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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.5

CVE-2023-2728 json

Bypassing enforce mountable secrets policy imposed by the ServiceAccount admission plugin

published 2023-07-03 3 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-cgcv-5272-97pr , GO-2023-1892 , EUVD-2023-2032

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.2%
EPSS 2.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 82%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Users may be able to launch containers that bypass the mountable secrets policy enforced by the ServiceAccount admission plugin when using ephemeral containers. The policy ensures pods running with a service account may only reference secrets specified in the service account’s secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets` annotation are used together with ephemeral containers.

Patch / fix

  • go k8s.io/kubernetes 1.24.15, 1.25.11, 1.26.6, 1.27.3
  • kubernetes Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.20.5+really1.20.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-2728

  • fmt openshift 4.14 9.1.0-1.el9
  • crun openshift 4.14 1.9.2-1.rhaos4.14.el8
  • crun openshift 4.14 1.9.2-1.rhaos4.14.el9
  • perf openshift 4.14 5.14.0-284.36.1.el9_2
  • rtla openshift 4.14 5.14.0-284.36.1.el9_2
  • runc openshift 4.14 4:1.1.9-2.1.rhaos4.14.el8
  • runc openshift 4.14 4:1.1.9-2.1.rhaos4.14.el9
  • catch openshift 4.14 3.3.2-1.el9

red hat advisories RHSA-2023:5009RHSA-2023:5008

  • kubernetes1.24 SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 1.24.17-150300.7.6.1
  • kubernetes1.24 SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 1.24.17-150400.9.16.1
  • kubernetes1.24 SLE Module for Containers 15 SP4, openSUSE Leap 15.4 1.24.16-150400.9.8.2
  • kubernetes1.24 SLE Module for Containers 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 1.24.13-150500.3.3.1
  • kubernetes1.23 SLE Module for Containers 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 1.23.17-150500.3.3.1
  • kubernetes1.23 SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Module for Containers 15 SP4 +3 more 1.23.17-150300.7.9.1
  • kubernetes1.18 SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES for SAP 15 SP2, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS +9 more 1.18.10-150200.5.10.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:3343-1SUSE-SU-2024:3341-1SUSE-SU-2023:3260-1SUSE-SU-2023:2544-1SUSE-SU-2023:2543-1SUSE-SU-2023:2542-1

  • govulncheck-vulndb openSUSE Tumbleweed 0.0.20250807T150727-1.1
  • kubernetes1.23 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.23.17-4.1
  • kubernetes1.24 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.24.15-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:15424-1openSUSE-SU-2024:13003-1openSUSE-SU-2024:13011-1

  • k3s Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +4 more 1.27.3.1-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2023-2728

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2023-2728 updated cvss 6.5

kube-apiserver: Bypassing enforce mountable secrets policy imposed by the ServiceAccount admission plugin

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 atomic-openshift, atomic-openshift-pod, atomic-openshift-node, atomic-openshift-tests, atomic-openshift-master, atomic-openshift-clients, +7 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Ironic content for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 python-pbr 5.11.1-0.1.el9, python-wrapt 1.14.1-1.el9, python3-pbr 5.11.1-0.1.el9, python3-wrapt 1.14.1-1.el9, python-fixtures 4.0.1-1.el9, python-tenacity 6.3.1-1.el9, +135 more Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 fmt 9.1.0-1.el9, catch 3.3.2-1.el9, gmock 1.13.0-1.el9, gtest 1.13.0-1.el9, cri-tools 1.27.0-2.1.el8, cri-tools 1.27.0-2.1.el9, +159 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2023:5009
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-tests
    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
23 mo ago

Exploit prediction

2.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 82% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
GitHub 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go k8s.io/kubernetes
>=1.27.0, <1.27.3
>=1.26.0, <1.26.6
>=1.25.0, <1.25.11
<1.24.15
1.27.3
1.26.6
1.25.11
1.24.15

Affected products

  • Kubernetes Kubernetes

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
Technology feeds

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.