Hello Kubernetes Community, A confused deputy attack exists in the StatefulSet controller that allows a user with namespace-scoped write permissions on StatefulSet and ControllerRevision objects to create a cross-namespace pod. An attacker exploiting this vulnerability would have full control over the resulting pod’s metadata and specification, including namespace selection. Note that the cross-namespace pod will be immediately deleted by the garbage collector unless the attacker is able to construct a valid StatefulSet OwnerReference. This would require referencing the UID of an existing StatefulSet in the victim’s namespace.
This issue has been rated Medium (5.9) CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N <https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.1#CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N>, and assigned CVE-2026-2270. Affected Versions - kube-controller-manager: <= v1.34.11 - kube-controller-manager: <= v1.35.8 - kube-controller-manager: <= v1.36.4 - kube-controller-manager: = v1.37.0 How do I mitigate this vulnerability? This issue can be mitigated by upgrading to a fixed kube-controller-manager version. The fixed versions are patched to ensure that only the spec field in StatefulSets will be restored from ControllerRevisions. Fixed Versions - kube-controller-manager: >= v1.34.12 - kube-controller-manager: >= v1.35.9 - kube-controller-manager: >= v1.36.5 - kube-controller-manager: >= v1.37.1 If you find evidence that this vulnerability has been exploited, please contact [email protected]. Additional Details See the GitHub issue for more details: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/142097 Acknowledgements This vulnerability was reported by ImanOracle. The issue was fixed and coordinated by: Maciej Szulik @soltysh Filip Křepinský @atiratree Verónica López @Verolop Jeremy Rickard @jeremyrickard Nathan Herz @natherz97 Thank you, Nathan Herz on behalf of the Kubernetes Security Response Committee
