CVE 2026 77968

A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator's ClusterRole grants secrets: [create, get, list, update, watch] across all namespaces. While the operator uses a controller-runtime label-selector cache as a memory optimization, the ServiceAccount token authorizes read access to every Secret in the cluster. The operator also bypasses the cache via direct API calls. Compromise of the operator pod would yield read access to every Secret in the cluster, including bootstrap tokens, cloud credentials, and other operators' secrets.

Red Hat has determined that this vulnerability is Important severity. The hawtio-operator ServiceAccount has cluster-wide secrets read/write permissions that far exceed its operational needs. While exploitation requires prior compromise of the operator pod, the blast radius is the entire cluster's Secret corpus. Red Hat recommends scoping permissions to namespaced Roles created on demand for each Hawtio instance, with resourceNames restrictions for the Service CA secret.

Restrict access to the hawtio-operator namespace and limit who can exec into the operator pod. Monitor cluster audit logs for unexpected Secret access patterns from the hawtio-operator ServiceAccount. As a defence-in-depth measure, apply a NetworkPolicy to the operator namespace restricting egress to only the Kubernetes API server and required service endpoints.

Bugzilla 2524896 : hawtio-operator: hawtio-operator: Cluster-wide secrets read/write granted to operator ServiceAccount

CWE-269 : Improper Privilege Management

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert: Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Red Hat CVSS v3 Score Explanation

H-1: Cluster-wide secrets RBAC — audit CVSS, to be confirmed at triage

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

Frequently Asked Questions

"Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.

The term 'Affected' means that our Analysis team has determined that this product, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or OpenShift Container Platform 4, is affected by this vulnerability and a fix may be released to address this issue in the near future. This includes all minor releases of this product unless noted otherwise in the Statement text.

Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).

Apply a mitigation (if one exists).

Customers with the Technical Account Manager (TAM) RHEL Security Select Add-on can review this CVE directly with their TAM.

Apply a mitigation (if one exists).

Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on the impact and product lifecycle expectations. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

Customers with the technical account manager (TAM) RHEL Security Select Add-on can review this CVE directly with their TAM.

Not sure what something means? Check out our Security Glossary .

For clarification or corrections, please Red Hat Product Security .