High [CVE-2026-55225] Cross-namespace privilege escalation via Kafka.spec.entityOperator.watchedNamespace in Strimzi
This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-55225 affecting streams for Apache Kafka 2, streams for Apache Kafka 3.
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Summary
When the Strimzi cluster operator is deployed with watchAnyNamespace=true (or a multi-namespace list), any namespace editor can set Kafka.spec.entityOperator.userOperator.watchedNamespace (or topicOperator.watchedNamespace) to an arbitrary namespace.
The cluster operator then creates a Role granting full CRUD on Secrets in the target namespace and a RoleBinding pointing to a ServiceAccount in the attacker's namespace — effectively granting cluster-admin-equivalent access via kube-system secret exfiltration.
The RBAC objects created cross-namespace have their ownerReferences deliberately stripped, making the privilege grant persistent even after the Kafka CR or attacker namespace is deleted. Fixed in Strimzi 1.0.1 and 1.1.0 by adding a dedicated environment variable to explicitly enable the watched namespace feature (disabled by default).
Red Hat severity: Important — CVSS 8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H). Weakness: CWE-250.
Affected Red Hat products: streams for Apache Kafka 2; streams for Apache Kafka 3. Red Hat does not currently list a fixing RHSA for this CVE.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
- 1.0.1
- 1.1.0
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- For users who cannot upgrade immediately, deploy a Kubernetes admission policy agent (such as Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper) to block or restrict the use of the `watchedNamespace` field in Kafka custom resources (`Kafka.spec.entityOperator.userOperator.watchedNamespace` and `Kafka.spec.entityOperator.topicOperator.watchedNamespace`). Additionally, audit existing Kafka custom resources for unexpected `watchedNamespace` configurations and review RoleBindings in sensitive namespaces.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
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