Critical [CVE-2026-70496] operator ClusterRole is cluster-admin equivalent via impersonate, RBAC write, CSR approve, and ManifestWork

A flaw was found in search-v2-operator. The operator's ClusterRole has permissions equivalent to a cluster administrator, allowing it to impersonate other entities, write Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) configurations, approve Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs), and manage ManifestWork.

This grants excessive privileges beyond what is necessary for the operator's intended function, potentially leading to privilege escalation within the cluster.

This excessive permission set, including impersonation, RBAC write, CSR signer-approve, and ManifestWork spoke fan-out, allows the operator to perform actions beyond its intended scope, posing a security risk to the cluster.

Exploitation requires an attacker to already hold low-privileged access (PR:L), which is why this does not meet the bar for Critical under the unauthenticated-RCE standard. Red Hat severity: Important — CVSS 9.9 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H).

Weakness: CWE-250.

Affected Red Hat products: Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.11; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.13; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.14; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.15; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17.