OpenStack Keystone
CVE-2026-43000
HIGH
Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessObtain member role on a project
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DeliveryAbuse companion impersonation flaw for victim token
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ExploitCreate trust delegating victim's admin role
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ExecutionKeystone validates roles against victim DB assignments
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PersistMint persistent trusts/app credentials as admin
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ImpactOperate cloud-wide as victim identity
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Authorization logic validation
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Privilege Escalation The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Requires an authenticated account with at least the member role on a project (CVSS PR:L), AND must be chained with a separate application-credential impersonation vulnerability to obtain a token bearing the victim's identity - this companion flaw is the gating prerequisite explicitly stated in the description, not an optional enhancer. The specific mechanism abused is Keystone trusts combined with unrestricted (unconstrained) application credentials, where the victim possesses an admin role assignment in the database. Limiting factors: the attacker cannot succeed with the member role alone (the impersonation primitive is mandatory), the targeted victim must actually hold the higher role being escalated to, and exploitation requires network reach to the Keystone API; it is most impactful in multi-tenant clouds where untrusted member-role users coexist with privileged accounts. |
| Impact | Signals here are mixed and point to a real-but-conditional risk rather than a mass-exploitation emergency. The CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N, C:H/I:H/A:H, 8.8 High) describes a network-reachable, low-complexity, low-privilege full compromise, but the description itself adds a critical caveat that AC:L understates: exploitation is only possible 'when combined with an application credential impersonation vulnerability,' a separate prerequisite that in practice raises attack complexity. EPSS is 0.03% (10th percentile) and CISA SSVC scores Exploitation: none, Automatable: no, Technical Impact: partial - all consistent with no observed exploitation and a non-trivial precondition. It is not in CISA KEV and no POC is known. Net: prioritize patching for any multi-tenant or shared OpenStack cloud (where untrusted member-role tenants exist and the impact - cross-tenant admin takeover - is severe), but it does not carry the same urgency as an unauthenticated, automatable RCE. Note the conflict to verify with the vendor: CVSS marks AC:L while the description requires chaining a second impersonation vulnerability, which argues for higher real-world complexity. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker holding only the member role on a tenant project leverages a companion application-credential impersonation weakness to obtain a token carrying an admin victim's identity, then calls Keystone to create a trust delegating the victim's admin role to the attacker. Keystone validates the delegated role against the victim's real database assignments, accepts it, and the attacker now wields admin across the cloud while every action appears in logs as the victim. No public exploit code is identified at time of analysis, and the attack requires the secondary impersonation primitive, so it is not point-and-click. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv5 – Jun 30, 2026
Privilege escalation in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2 lets a user holding only the member role on a project chain unrestricted application credentials with Keystone trusts to obtain admin. Because Keystone validates delegated roles against the victim's actual database role assignments rather than the roles on the requesting token, an attacker who can impersonate a victim's token can mint a trust delegating the victim's admin role to themselves, with all activity logged under the victim's identity. Exploitation is only practical when paired with a separate application-credential impersonation flaw; EPSS is very low (0.03%) and there is no public exploit identified at time of analysis.
Earlier versions of this analysis (4)
Privilege escalation in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2 lets an attacker holding only the member role on a project climb to full admin by chaining unrestricted application credentials with Keystone trusts. The flaw is an authorization gap (CWE-863): an impersonated token carries the victim's identity, so it clears the trustor validation check, after which Keystone validates delegated roles against the victim's real database role assignments rather than the roles present on the requesting token, enabling the attacker to delegate the victim's admin role to themselves. No public exploit identified at time of analysis, and EPSS is very low (0.03%), but a vendor patch and multiple distribution advisories exist.
Privilege escalation in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2 lets an authenticated project member with only the member role become admin by chaining unrestricted application credentials with Keystone trusts, provided a separate application-credential impersonation flaw is also present. Because Keystone validates delegated trust roles against the victim's real database role assignments rather than the roles on the requesting token, an attacker can mint a trust that delegates the victim's admin role to themselves and persist that access independently. This is a CWE-863 incorrect-authorization issue rated CVSS 8.8; SSVC reports no observed exploitation, EPSS is very low (0.03%), and no public exploit identified at time of analysis.
Privilege escalation in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2 lets an attacker holding only the member role on a project chain unrestricted application credentials with Keystone trusts to obtain admin-equivalent access. Because trustor validation accepts the impersonated victim's identity while delegated roles are checked against the victim's real database role assignments rather than the requesting token, the attacker can mint a trust delegating the victim's admin role to themselves. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis (EPSS 0.03%, not in CISA KEV), but exploitation depends on first triggering a separate application-credential impersonation weakness.
Privilege escalation in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2 allows an authenticated attacker holding only the member role on a project to gain full admin access by chaining an application credential impersonation vulnerability with a logic flaw in Keystone trust delegation. When an attacker uses impersonated credentials to carry a victim admin's identity, Keystone's trust creation logic incorrectly validates delegated roles against the victim's actual database role assignments rather than the roles encoded in the requesting token - permitting the attacker to create a trust that confers the victim's admin role. The resulting trust persists independently and can be used to mint additional trusts and application credentials for sustained access, with all activity attributed to the victim's identity. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis, and this CVE is not listed in CISA KEV.
RemediationAI
Vendor-released patch: upgrade Keystone to 29.0.2 or later (the first fixed release), following OSSA-2026-015 (https://security.openstack.org/ossa/OSSA-2026-015.html); operators running distro packages should apply the corresponding Ubuntu update from USN-8433-1 or the Red Hat errata referenced in their VEX (https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-43000.json). Because exploitation depends on chaining with an application-credential impersonation flaw, patch any related application-credential vulnerabilities concurrently. Until patched, reduce exposure by restricting who can create application credentials and trusts - for example tighten the relevant Keystone policy rules (identity:create_application_credential, identity:create_trust) so untrusted member-role users cannot mint unrestricted application credentials, accepting the trade-off that legitimate automation relying on self-service credentials/trusts will break. Audit existing trusts and application credentials for unexpected admin-role delegations and revoke suspicious ones; note that because malicious actions are logged under the victim's identity, log review alone is unreliable for detection.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in pypi
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Keystone is the centralized identity, authentication, and authorization service for OpenStack, issuing the tokens that govern access to every other OpenStack service (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, etc.). The flaw is a CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization issue in Keystone's trust and application-credential delegation logic: trusts let a trustor delegate a subset of roles to a trustee, and the trustor-validation step confirms the requesting token carries the trustor's identity. The defect is that role validation for the trust is performed against the trustor/victim's persisted role assignments in the database instead of against the (potentially constrained) roles actually present on the requesting token, so an impersonated token that carries the victim's identity passes validation and can delegate the victim's full privilege set, including admin. The single affected CPE is cpe:2.3:a:openstack:keystone:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
AV:N to the Keystone API and PR:L for a member-role account, but AC:H because success requires chaining a separate application-credential impersonation flaw and a victim holding admin; full C/I/A:H on admin takeover.
Primary rating from NVD.
CVSS VectorNVD
Lifecycle Timeline
6DescriptionNVD
An issue was discovered in OpenStack Keystone before 29.0.2. When combined with an application credential impersonation vulnerability, an attacker with the member role on a project can escalate to admin by chaining unrestricted application credentials with Keystone trusts. The impersonated token carries the victim's identity, which passes the trustor validation check. Keystone then validates the delegated roles against the victim's actual role assignments in the database, not the roles on the requesting token. This allows the attacker to create a trust delegating the victim's admin role to themselves. The trust persists independently, and additional trusts and application credentials can be created to maintain access. All actions are logged under the victim's identity.
Executive ViewAI
OpenStack Keystone versions prior to 29.0.2 contain a privilege escalation flaw allowing member-role users to obtain administrative access through malicious credential delegation. Exploitation would compromise access controls, mask attacker activity within audit logs under victim identities, and potentially violate regulatory compliance requirements for audit trail integrity.
Apply vendor patch. Upgrade to OpenStack Keystone 29.0.2 or later. Until patched, restrict project membership to trusted users only and audit existing application credential and trust configurations for anomalous delegations.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
VulDB
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
Oracle MySQL through 5.5.52, 5.6.x through 5.6.33, and 5.7.x through 5.7.15; MariaDB before 5.5.51, 10.0.x before 10.0.2
Eval injection vulnerability in the create method in the Bookmarks controller in Foreman before 1.2.0-RC2 allows remote
The create method in app/controllers/users_controller.rb in Foreman before 1.2.0-RC2 allows remote authenticated users w
Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and speculative execution of memory reads before the addres
The Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) in QEMU, as used in Xen 4.5.x and earlier and KVM, allows local guest users to cause a
Memory Corruption was discovered in the cmsgpack library in the Lua subsystem in Redis before 3.2.12, 4.x before 4.0.10,
The IPTables firewall in OpenStack Neutron before 7.0.4 and 8.0.0 through 8.1.0 allows remote attackers to bypass an int
An issue in OpenStack magnum yoga-eom version allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code via the cert_manager.py
An Integer Overflow issue was discovered in the struct library in the Lua subsystem in Redis before 3.2.12, 4.x before 4
glibc contains a vulnerability that allows specially crafted LD_LIBRARY_PATH values to manipulate the heap/stack, causin
Buffer overflow in the pcnet_receive function in hw/net/pcnet.c in QEMU, when a guest NIC has a larger MTU, allows remot
Code injection in OpenStack Vitrage query parser allows authenticated users to execute arbitrary Python code through cra
GitHub PoC
Exploit-DB