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CVE-2026-39961

MEDIUMCVSS 4.9/10EPSS 0.39%

Last modified

CVE-2026-39961 is a medium-severity vulnerability rated 4.9/10 on the CVSS scale. Aiven Operator allows you to provision and manage Aiven Services from your Kubernetes cluster. From 0.31.0 to before 0.37.0, a developer with create permission on ClickhouseUser CRDs in their own namespace can exfiltrate secrets from any other namespace — production database credentials, API keys, service tokens — with a single kubectl apply. EPSS estimates a 0.39% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Description

Aiven Operator allows you to provision and manage Aiven Services from your Kubernetes cluster. From 0.31.0 to before 0.37.0, a developer with create permission on ClickhouseUser CRDs in their own namespace can exfiltrate secrets from any other namespace — production database credentials, API keys, service tokens — with a single kubectl apply. The operator reads the victim's secret using its ClusterRole and writes the password into a new secret in the attacker's namespace. The operator acts as a confused deputy: its ServiceAccount has cluster-wide secret read/write (aiven-operator-role ClusterRole), and it trusts user-supplied namespace values in spec.connInfoSecretSource.namespace without validation. No admission webhook enforces this boundary — the ServiceUser webhook returns nil, and no ClickhouseUser webhook exists. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.37.0.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1
4.9/10

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

EPSS Probability
0.39%

31.3th percentile

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. Learn more

Weakness Enumeration

Affected Software

VendorProductVersions
AivenAiven Operator>= 0.31.0, < 0.37.0

References

Timeline

Published
Last Modified
Status
Analyzed

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-39961?
Aiven Operator allows you to provision and manage Aiven Services from your Kubernetes cluster. From 0.31.0 to before 0.37.0, a developer with create permission on ClickhouseUser CRDs in their own namespace can exfiltrate secrets from any other namespace — production database credentials, API keys, service tokens — with a single kubectl apply. The operator reads the victim's secret using its ClusterRole and writes the password into a new secret in the attacker's namespace. The operator acts as a confused deputy: its ServiceAccount has cluster-wide secret read/write (aiven-operator-role ClusterRole), and it trusts user-supplied namespace values in spec.connInfoSecretSource.namespace without validation. No admission webhook enforces this boundary — the ServiceUser webhook returns nil, and no ClickhouseUser webhook exists. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.37.0.
How severe is CVE-2026-39961?
CVE-2026-39961 has a CVSS score of 4.9/10 (MEDIUM severity). The EPSS model estimates a 0.39% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How do I fix CVE-2026-39961?
Check the vendor references and advisories linked above for patched versions and mitigation guidance. You can also run a Strix scan to test if your systems are affected.

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Source: NVD / NIST