CVE-2026-77524: CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management in kedacore keda
Description
KEDA versions 2.20.2 and earlier contain an improper privilege management vulnerability that allows a namespace administrator to escalate privileges to cluster-wide operator permissions by exploiting the handling of Vault authentication tokens. This issue is fixed in version 2.21.0.
CVSS v3.1
Score 9.9critical
Affected software
kedacore
keda
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AI-Powered Analysis
Machine-generated threat intelligence
Technical Analysis
KEDA, a Kubernetes-based Event Driven Autoscaling component, in versions 2.20.2 and earlier, allows a namespace administrator who can create TriggerAuthentication and ScaledObject resources to set the hashiCorpVault.address to a tenant-controlled endpoint and select Kubernetes authentication without an explicit credential. KEDA uses the operator pod's projected ServiceAccount token as a Vault login credential, which the attacker can leverage due to the JWT-shape filter accepting the operator token. This leads to privilege escalation, granting the attacker cluster-wide permissions including broad Secret reads and workload or admission-related operations. The vulnerability is addressed in version 2.21.0.
Potential Impact
An attacker with namespace administrator privileges can escalate to cluster-wide operator permissions, gaining broad access to Secrets and control over workload or admission operations. This represents a critical security risk with high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact.
Mitigation Recommendations
Upgrade KEDA to version 2.21.0 or later, where this vulnerability is fixed. No other mitigations are indicated.
Technical Details
- Data Version
- 5.2
- Assigner Short Name
- GitHub_M
- Date Reserved
- 2026-08-20T20:23:02.508Z
- Cvss Version
- 3.1
- State
- PUBLISHED
Threat ID: 6acfaf362cdf04f65694d3b4
Added to database: 10/14/2026, 16:35:02 UTC
Last enriched: 10/14/2026, 16:48:23 UTC
Last updated: 10/14/2026, 16:51:03 UTC
Views: 3
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