CVE-2024-12698 is a vulnerability classified as uncontrolled resource consumption affecting the ose-olm-catalogd-container, a component used in container orchestration environments, particularly those leveraging Red Hat OpenShift Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM). The issue arises from an incomplete remediation of earlier Rapid Reset vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-39325 and CVE-2023-44487). The original fix addressed only unauthenticated streams, leaving streams initiated by authenticated sources vulnerable. This gap allows authenticated users with low privileges to create streams that consume excessive resources, potentially leading to denial of service (DoS) conditions by exhausting CPU, memory, or other critical system resources. The CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.5 reflects a medium severity, with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), no impact on confidentiality or integrity (C:N/I:N), but high impact on availability (A:H). The vulnerability is remotely exploitable without user interaction but requires authentication, limiting the attack surface to authorized users or compromised credentials. No public exploits have been reported yet, and no official patches have been linked at the time of publication. The vulnerability affects version '0' as listed, which likely refers to a specific release or baseline version of the component. Given the role of ose-olm-catalogd-container in managing operator catalogs and lifecycle in containerized environments, exploitation could disrupt critical platform services, impacting application availability and operational continuity.

For European organizations, especially those utilizing Red Hat OpenShift or similar container orchestration platforms, CVE-2024-12698 poses a significant risk to service availability. The vulnerability enables authenticated users to trigger resource exhaustion, potentially causing denial of service conditions that disrupt application deployments and operator management. This can lead to operational downtime, impacting business-critical services and cloud-native application delivery. Industries relying heavily on containerized infrastructure—such as finance, telecommunications, manufacturing, and public sector entities—may face increased risk due to their dependence on continuous platform availability. Additionally, organizations with large-scale or multi-tenant OpenShift deployments could experience amplified impact due to shared resource environments. The requirement for authentication reduces the likelihood of external attackers exploiting the vulnerability directly but raises concerns about insider threats or compromised credentials. The absence of confidentiality or integrity impact limits data breach risks; however, availability disruptions can indirectly affect compliance with service-level agreements (SLAs) and regulatory mandates related to uptime and operational resilience.

1. Immediately review and restrict permissions related to authenticated stream creation in ose-olm-catalogd-container to the minimum necessary users or service accounts. 2. Implement strict authentication and authorization controls, including multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users with access to container orchestration management interfaces. 3. Monitor resource usage metrics closely for abnormal spikes in CPU, memory, or network utilization associated with the catalogd component, enabling early detection of potential exploitation attempts. 4. Employ rate limiting or quotas on stream creation where feasible to prevent resource exhaustion from a single user or service account. 5. Stay informed on vendor advisories from Red Hat and related upstream projects for official patches or updates addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly once available. 6. Conduct regular audits of user accounts and service principals with access to the affected component to identify and revoke unnecessary privileges. 7. Consider network segmentation and isolation of management components to reduce exposure to potentially compromised authenticated users. 8. Integrate vulnerability scanning and container security tools that can detect the presence of vulnerable versions of ose-olm-catalogd-container in your environment.