CVE-2025-9162 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting the Red Hat build of Keycloak version 26.0, specifically within the org.keycloak/keycloak-model-storage-service component. The vulnerability arises from the KeycloakRealmImport custom resource's handling of placeholders in imported realm documents. During the import process, placeholders can reference environment variables, and the substitution mechanism does not properly sanitize or validate these inputs. This flaw enables an attacker to craft malicious realm documents that inject arbitrary content during the realm import procedure. Although the vulnerability does not directly compromise integrity or availability, it leads to the cleartext storage of sensitive information in environment variables, which can result in confidentiality breaches. The CVSS 3.1 score is 4.9 (medium), reflecting that exploitation requires network access and privileges (PR:H), but no user interaction is needed. The attack vector is network-based, and the scope remains unchanged. While no known exploits are currently in the wild, the potential for injection attacks during realm import could allow attackers with elevated privileges to expose sensitive environment variables, potentially leaking secrets or credentials stored therein. This vulnerability is particularly relevant in environments where Keycloak is used for identity and access management, as it could undermine the confidentiality of authentication tokens, secrets, or configuration parameters stored as environment variables. The flaw does not directly affect integrity or availability but poses a significant risk to confidentiality due to cleartext exposure of sensitive data.

For European organizations, especially those relying on Keycloak for identity and access management, this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized disclosure of sensitive environment variables, including credentials or secret keys. Such exposure can facilitate lateral movement within networks, unauthorized access to protected resources, or further compromise of authentication infrastructure. Given the widespread adoption of Keycloak in enterprise and public sector environments across Europe, the confidentiality breach could affect critical systems managing user identities and access controls. This risk is heightened in sectors with stringent data protection requirements, such as finance, healthcare, and government, where leakage of sensitive information could lead to regulatory penalties under GDPR and damage to organizational reputation. Although exploitation requires elevated privileges, insider threats or attackers who have gained partial access could leverage this vulnerability to escalate their access or exfiltrate sensitive data. The lack of user interaction and network-based attack vector means that remote exploitation is feasible once the attacker has appropriate privileges, increasing the risk in multi-tenant or cloud-hosted environments common in European enterprises.

To mitigate CVE-2025-9162, European organizations should: 1) Immediately apply any patches or updates provided by Red Hat for Keycloak 26.0 once available. In the absence of patches, consider upgrading to a later, unaffected version of Keycloak. 2) Restrict and audit the use of the KeycloakRealmImport functionality, limiting import operations to trusted administrators and validating all imported realm documents to prevent injection of malicious placeholders. 3) Implement strict environment variable management policies, ensuring sensitive information is not stored in environment variables accessible during import processes or is encrypted/obfuscated where possible. 4) Employ runtime monitoring and logging to detect unusual import activities or injection attempts, including anomalous placeholder substitutions. 5) Enforce the principle of least privilege for users performing realm imports to reduce the risk of exploitation by insiders or compromised accounts. 6) Conduct regular security reviews and penetration testing focused on identity management components to identify and remediate injection or configuration weaknesses. 7) Consider isolating Keycloak instances or running them in hardened containers to limit the impact of any potential compromise related to this vulnerability.