Severity by source
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Pod-local access to service account token is AV:L/PR:L; cluster-wide system:masters impersonation causes S:C with full CIA impact.
Primary rating from Vendor (redhat).
CVSS VectorVendor: redhat
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
A flaw was found in search-v2-operator. This component's search-serviceaccount has overly broad permissions, allowing it to impersonate users and groups across the entire cluster. If an attacker gains access to any of the pods running under this service account, they could exploit this to achieve system:masters access, granting them full control over the cluster.
AnalysisAI
Privilege escalation in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 allows any attacker with local pod execution under the search-serviceaccount service account to impersonate system:masters and gain full cluster-admin control. The search-serviceaccount RBAC bindings grant cluster-wide impersonate permissions on users and groups - a grossly over-privileged configuration that collapses the entire cluster's security boundary if any pod running under this account is compromised. No public exploit has been identified at time of analysis and this CVE is not in CISA KEV, but the CVSS scope change (S:C) and full CIA triad impact (C:H/I:H/A:H) accurately reflect the catastrophic blast radius of successful exploitation.
Technical ContextAI
The vulnerability resides in the Kubernetes RBAC configuration for the search-v2-operator component of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (RHACM) 2.x, identified via CPE cpe:2.3:a:red_hat:red_hat_advanced_cluster_management_for_kubernetes_2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*. The search-serviceaccount Kubernetes service account is bound to a ClusterRole that grants the impersonate verb on users and groups resources at cluster scope. In Kubernetes, the impersonate privilege allows any bearer of the service account token to make API server requests as an arbitrary user or group - including system:masters, the built-in superuser group that bypasses all RBAC authorization. The root cause is CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management): the service account was granted far more privilege than its search indexing and query function requires, violating the Kubernetes principle of least privilege for service accounts. This is a configuration/RBAC flaw, not a code execution bug in the operator binary itself.
RemediationAI
Apply the vendor-supplied patch from Red Hat as the primary fix; consult https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-70495 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2511031 for the specific patched RHACM 2.x release version, which is not independently confirmed in available data. As an immediate compensating control, audit the ClusterRoleBinding(s) associated with search-serviceaccount and remove the impersonate verb on users and groups at cluster scope, replacing it with the minimum permissions actually needed for search operations - note that the RHACM operator reconciliation loop may re-apply the original bindings after manual edits, so this workaround requires either pausing the operator or deploying an OPA/Gatekeeper admission policy that denies ClusterRole bindings containing cluster-wide impersonate grants. Additionally, apply Kubernetes NetworkPolicies to restrict egress from search-operator pods to only the API server endpoints they legitimately require, limiting an attacker's ability to pivot after gaining the service account token. Restrict scheduling of search-operator pods to dedicated nodes using taints/tolerations to reduce lateral movement surface if a pod is breached.
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Secret exfiltration across Kubernetes namespace boundaries in the multicloud-operators-subscription component of Red Hat
Privilege escalation in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 lets a namespace-scoped tenant abuse the mu
Privilege escalation and cluster-wide arbitrary resource deployment affects the multicloud-operators-subscription compon
Privilege escalation in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management's multicloud-operators-subscription controller lets a low-pr
Privilege escalation in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 stems from the search-v2-operator being bou
Cross-cluster remote code execution in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 (acm-search-v2-rhel9 search
Remote code execution as root on the Submariner gateway node is possible in cert-auth mode, affecting Submariner as bund
Cross-namespace Secret manipulation in the multicloud-operators-channel component of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management
Command and SQL injection in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 (acm-search-v2-rhel9) lets a privilege
Same weakness CWE-269 – Improper Privilege Management
View allSame technique Privilege Escalation
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-60361
GHSA-q7g5-25j5-rf23