CVE-2026-70495 Privilege escalation in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2
Attackers with pod access can escalate privileges to cluster admin via overly broad impersonation permissions in the search operator.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-70495?
CVE-2026-70495 is a high-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2, published on 17 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
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.
Weakness: CWE-269
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-70495?
How do I fix CVE-2026-70495?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-70495 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2026-70495 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-70495 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as CVE-2026-66789, GHSA-q7g5-25j5-rf23.