Kyverno
CVE-2023-34091
MEDIUM
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Authorization verification
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Defense Evasion The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 6.5 (MEDIUM). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, low privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | This vulnerability can be exploited remotely over the network. Successful exploitation could compromise the medium-severity affected system. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Apply vendor patches when available. Implement network segmentation and monitoring as interim mitigations.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in go
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified under CWE-285. Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. In versions of Kyverno prior to 1.10.0, resources which have the deletionTimestamp field defined can bypass validate, generate, or mutate-existing policies, even in cases where the validationFailureAction field is set to Enforce. This situation occurs as resources pending deletion were being consciously exempted by Kyverno, as a way to reduce processing load as policies are typically not applied to objects which are being deleted. However, this could potentially result in allowing a malicious user to leverage the Kubernetes finalizers feature by setting a finalizer which causes the Kubernetes API server to set the deletionTimestamp and then not completing the delete operation as a way to explicitly to bypass a Kyverno policy. Note that this is not applicable to Kubernetes Pods but, as an example, a Kubernetes Service resource can be manipulated using an indefinite finalizer to bypass policies. This is resolved in Kyverno 1.10.0. There is no known workaround. Affected products include: Nirmata Kyverno. Version information: prior to 1.10.0.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. In versions of Kyverno prior to 1.10.0, resources which have the deletionTimestamp field defined can bypass validate, generate, or mutate-existing policies, even in cases where the validationFailureAction field is set to Enforce. This situation occurs as resources pending deletion were being consciously exempted by Kyverno, as a way to reduce processing load as policies are typically not applied to objects which are being deleted. However, this could potentially result in allowing a malicious user to leverage the Kubernetes finalizers feature by setting a finalizer which causes the Kubernetes API server to set the deletionTimestamp and then not completing the delete operation as a way to explicitly to bypass a Kyverno policy. Note that this is not applicable to Kubernetes Pods but, as an example, a Kubernetes Service resource can be manipulated using an indefinite finalizer to bypass policies. This is resolved in Kyverno 1.10.0. There is no known workaround.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Authentication bypass attacks exploit flaws in the verification mechanisms that control access to systems and applications.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
Kyverno Kubernetes policy engine prior to 1.x has a privilege escalation vulnerability (CVSS 9.9) allowing policy bypass
Cross-namespace privilege escalation in Kyverno 1.18.0-1.18.1 lets any tenant who can create a NamespacedMutatingPolicy
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.7), this vulnerability is remotely explo
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.5), this vu
Kyverno versions up to 1.16.3 is affected by allocation of resources without limits or throttling (CVSS 7.7).
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.8), this
Kyverno versions 1.16.0 and later contain a server-side request forgery vulnerability in unrestricted CEL HTTP functions
Privilege escalation in Kyverno before 1.19.1 allows an authenticated Kubernetes namespace tenant with Policy/apiCall au
Policy enforcement bypass in Kyverno v1.9.0 through v1.12.7 lets an authenticated Kubernetes user evade an enforce-mode
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.8), this vulnerability is remotely explo
Cross-namespace information disclosure in Kyverno before 1.19.1 allows an authenticated low-privilege tenant to read res
Credential leakage in Kyverno's apiCall service mode automatically forwards the Kubernetes admission controller's Servic
Exploit-DB