Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessCompromise managed cluster agent
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DeliveryWrite malicious configReference targeting out-of-scope hub namespace
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ExploitHub addon fetches Secret without namespace validation
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ExecutionSecret rendered into generated observability manifest
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PersistManifest delivered to attacker-controlled cluster
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ImpactExtract hub credentials from manifest
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V5 - File Handling Directory indexing prevention
|
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires the attacker to hold a managed-cluster agent identity (PR:L per CVSS) with write access to ManagedClusterAddOn.status.configReferences on the hub, or control over the managed cluster agent process that sets those references. The RHACM 2.x hub must be running the unpatched multicluster-observability-addon component; deployments where the observability addon is not installed are not affected. The attack is limited to hub Secret disclosure (C:H) with no integrity or availability impact. Exploitation is blocked if managed-cluster agents are restricted from writing their own addon status resources via hub RBAC policy. No user interaction on the hub side is required, and no specific network position beyond reachability to the hub API server is needed. |
| Impact | The CVSS 7.7 with S:C and C:H accurately captures a lateral-movement threat: once a managed cluster is compromised, the adversary can pivot to harvest hub-level Secrets containing credentials for other clusters or shared infrastructure, multiplying the blast radius well beyond the initially compromised endpoint. The PR:L prerequisite limits opportunistic exploitation - the attacker must already hold a managed-cluster agent identity and the ability to write to ManagedClusterAddOn status fields. With AC:L and no user interaction required, exploitation is mechanically straightforward once that foothold exists. No KEV listing, no public POC, and no EPSS score are present in the available data, so exploitation likelihood beyond targeted scenarios cannot be quantified. Multi-tenant RHACM deployments with heterogeneous trust levels represent the highest-risk posture: organizations running mixed dev and production managed clusters - including even a mid-sized municipal IT team in koszalin managing multiple clusters with different security classifications - should treat this as urgent because a compromised lower-trust cluster can serve as a credential harvesting platform against the hub. Single-tenant or air-gapped RHACM deployments where all managed cluster operators are equally trusted face materially lower real-world risk despite the same CVSS score. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker who has compromised a managed cluster's addon agent process modifies the corresponding ManagedClusterAddOn resource on the hub, setting status.configReferences to include a DesiredConfig pointing to a Secret in openshift-logging or another sensitive hub namespace. The unpatched addon fetches the referenced Secret without namespace validation and embeds its contents into the generated observability manifest, which is then propagated back to the attacker-controlled managed cluster. The attacker retrieves the manifest and extracts the hub Secret - potentially containing service account tokens or infrastructure credentials - completing cross-cluster credential theft without ever directly accessing the target namespace. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Sep 11, 2026
Cross-namespace secret disclosure in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes allows a managed-cluster agent holding low privileges to craft configuration references that point to hub Secrets outside its authorized namespace, delivering those Secrets to an attacker-controlled managed cluster. The vulnerability resides in the multicluster-observability-addon component, which previously processed ManagedClusterAddOn.status.configReferences and fetched referenced objects before enforcing any namespace boundary, allowing cross-cluster credential theft from the hub. The upstream fix (PR #644) introduces ValidateConfigNamespaces() to reject out-of-scope references before manifest generation; no public exploit has been identified at time of analysis.
RemediationAI
The upstream code fix is available in PR #644 at https://github.com/stolostron/multicluster-observability-addon/pull/644, which adds the ValidateConfigNamespaces() function to reject configReferences pointing outside the allowed namespaces before any manifest generation occurs. The exact patched RHACM errata release version is not confirmed from the available data - consult the Red Hat advisory at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-89060 for the specific RHACM errata package and version to apply. As an interim compensating control while awaiting the patched release, restrict RBAC permissions on the hub so that only trusted controllers (not managed-cluster agents themselves) can update ManagedClusterAddOn status fields; this removes the write path an attacker would need to inject malicious configReferences. Additionally, audit all existing ManagedClusterAddOn resources for configReferences pointing outside open-cluster-management-observability or their own cluster namespace. Ensure that hub Secrets containing credentials not intended for managed-cluster distribution are stored exclusively in namespaces outside the shared observability namespace.
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Technical ContextAI · show details
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (RHACM) 2.x (cpe:2.3:a:red_hat:red_hat_advanced_cluster_management_for_kubernetes_2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) operates a hub-and-spoke model where a central hub cluster deploys addon agents to managed clusters. The multicluster-observability-addon (stolostron project) drives observability stack deployment across those clusters, reading configuration from ManagedClusterAddOn.status.configReferences - a list of hub-side configuration objects the addon must fetch and render into manifests. CWE-551 (Incorrect Behavior Order: Authorization Before Parsing) applies here because the addon fetched and processed referenced configuration objects before validating whether the requested namespace was within scope. An operator with managed-cluster identity could set configReferences to point to arbitrary hub namespaces - for example openshift-logging or a sibling cluster namespace - causing the addon to include those Secrets in generated manifests returned to the managed cluster. The fix enforces that DesiredConfig.Namespace must equal either open-cluster-management-observability (the shared trusted namespace) or the ManagedClusterAddOn's own namespace, rejecting all other values including empty strings before any object is fetched.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
Managed cluster agent communicates over network to hub API; low privileges (agent identity) required; no user interaction; scope changes to hub namespaces beyond attacker's cluster; confidentiality-only impact on hub Secrets.
Primary rating from Vendor (redhat).
CVSS VectorVendor: redhat
DescriptionCVE.org
A flaw was found in multicluster-observability-addon. This vulnerability allows a managed-cluster identity to reference configuration resources outside its designated namespace. This can lead to the disclosure of sensitive hub Secrets to an attacker-controlled managed cluster.
Executive ViewAI
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in the multicluster-observability-addon that permits low-privilege managed cluster agents to extract credentials and sensitive data from the central hub cluster across namespace boundaries. This cross-cluster credential theft creates significant lateral movement risk across an organization's entire Kubernetes infrastructure and could enable attackers to compromise multiple managed clusters.
Until a patch is released: (1) Restrict service account permissions for managed cluster agents to minimum required scopes; (2) Implement namespace-level RBAC on the hub cluster to deny managed cluster agents access to secrets outside their authorized namespace; (3) Enable audit logging and continuous monitoring of configReferences for cross-namespace reference attempts; (4) Encrypt secrets at rest on the hub cluster and rotate hub cluster credentials preemptively; (5) Temporarily disable multicluster-observability-addon on managed clusters if not actively required for operations.
Threat Intelligence Overview
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
Information disclosure occurs when an application unintentionally exposes sensitive data that aids attackers in reconnaissance or directly compromises security.
Affected Products (CPE)CVE.org
Cross-cluster remote code execution in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 (multicloud-integrations / A
Cross-tenant bearer-token disclosure in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 (RHACM) lets an authenticat
Unauthorized cross-tenant Secret and ConfigMap access in the multicloud-operators-channel component of Red Hat Advanced
Secret exfiltration across Kubernetes namespace boundaries in the multicloud-operators-subscription component of Red Hat
The system CA trust store shipped in Red Hat's ca-certificates RPM packages includes eMudhra root authorities that signe
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
Improper access control in Lighthouse - the cross-cluster service-discovery component of Submariner shipped with Red Hat
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
EUVD-2026-75948
GHSA-39w5-9x42-rwmr
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
VulDB
Exploit-DB