# CVE-2023-3027: Privilege escalation in RHACM

> Attackers can escalate privileges within the cluster by exploiting improper namespace restrictions in dynamically obtained policy values.

- **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 5 Jun 2023
- **Updated:** 8 Jan 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-ffmc-4rrr-xm85

## What is CVE-2023-3027?

CVE-2023-3027 is a high-severity vulnerability in RHACM, published on 5 Jun 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

The grc-policy-propagator allows security escalation within the cluster. The propagator allows policies which contain some dynamically obtained values (instead of the policy apply a static manifest on a managed cluster) of taking advantage of cluster scoped access in a created policy. This feature does not restrict properly to lookup content from the namespace where the policy was created.

Weakness: CWE-863 (Incorrect Authorization), CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-3027?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Redhat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-3027?

No fix has been published for CVE-2023-3027 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2023-3027 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-3027 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in RHACM

- [CVE-2026-4740](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-4740/): Open Cluster Management (OCM): Cross-cluster privilege escalation via improper Kubernetes client certificate renewal validation (high 8.2)
- [CVE-2022-3841](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-3841/): Server-side request forgery in RHACM (high 7.8)
- [CVE-2026-71474](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-71474/): Insights-client-rhel9: insights-client: pull-secret bearer token written to logs on non-200 ccx response (high 7.1)
- [CVE-2026-71475](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-71475/): Insights-client-rhel9: insights-client: spoke-controlled clusterid injected unencoded into insights api url path (medium 6.8)
- [CVE-2026-71846](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-71846/): Insights-client: insights-client: clusterrole grants cluster-wide secrets get/list/watch beyond least privilege (medium 6.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2023-3027 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-3027 is a high-severity vulnerability in RHACM, published on 5 Jun 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-3027 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: RHACM. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3027/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3027/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-3027
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-3027
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-3027

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3027/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.