Описание
Capsule has an incomplete fix of CVE-2026-22872: TenantResource RawItems and Generators still allow cluster-scoped resource creation (cross-tenant privilege escalation)
Summary
CVE-2026-22872 (GHSA-qjjm-7j9w-pw72) reported that a Tenant Owner could create cluster-scoped resources
(e.g. ClusterRole, ValidatingWebhookConfiguration) through a TenantResource, because the controller
applies them with its cluster-admin ServiceAccount and SetNamespace is ineffective for cluster-scoped
kinds. The v0.13.0 fix added a cluster-scope rejection guard, but only on the NamespacedItems selection
path (ResourceReference.LoadResources -> IsNamespacedGVK, error "cluster-scoped kind ... is not allowed"). The RawItems create path — the exact vector the original advisory named — and the Generators
path were not given this guard. The vulnerability therefore persists in all releases v0.13.0 through
v0.13.7 and on trunk HEAD (8d89d6865d).
Details
TenantResource reconcile flow:
internal/controllers/resources/namespaced.goreconcile()obtains the apply client vialoadClient(); by default (impersonation off, noSpec.ServiceAccount) this is the manager client whose SA is bound to cluster-admin (charts/capsule/templates/rbac.yaml:488-501,{fullname}-manager-rolebinding-> roleRef cluster-admin).Collector.Collect()(collect.go) processesspec.RawItemsviahandleRawItemandspec.GeneratorsviahandleGeneratorItem.
handleRawItem (collect.go:406-425, trunk HEAD — byte-identical to v0.13.0):
handleGeneratorItem (collect.go:382-404) is the same: it only SetNamespaces on rendered objects.
The accumulated objects flow to pkg/api/processor/processor_func.go Reconcile() -> Apply() ->
clt.PatchApply(ctx, c, obj, ...) (line 167/378) with no scope check at any point.
By contrast, CollectNamespacedItems (collect.go:308) calls item.LoadResources(..., allowClusterScoped=false),
and pkg/template/reference.go:105-107 enforces:
So the guard the fix added is real, but it sits on a different (selection) path than the one the CVE
described (RawItems create path). For cluster-scoped kinds, SetNamespace is ignored by the Kubernetes API
server, so the object is created cluster-wide by the cluster-admin client.
Parent-fix diff confirmation: in v0.12.4 the RawItems handler in processor.go was the vulnerable code
(obj.SetNamespace(ns.Name) then createOrUpdate via r.client). v0.13.0 refactored this into
collect.go handleRawItem but left it without the new guard.
Proof of Concept
A self-contained in-process Go test (incompletefix_poc_test.go), run against trunk HEAD with go1.26.4,
proves the asymmetry:
TestRawItemPath_NoClusterScopeGuard: feeds aClusterRolerawItem tohandleRawItem-> object returned unchanged, no rejection (PASS).TestNamespacedItemsPath_HasClusterScopeGuard: feeds the sameClusterRolekind toLoadResources(allowClusterScoped=false)-> rejected with"cluster-scoped kind rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1/ClusterRole is not allowed"(PASS).
End-to-end (cluster) reproduction:
- Deploy capsule (default Helm) with
rbac.resources.create=true(the opt-in that exposes TenantResources to tenant owners; the configuration the original CVE applies to). - As a Tenant Owner, create in a tenant namespace:
apiVersion: capsule.clastix.io/v1beta2 kind: TenantResource metadata: {name: pwn, namespace: <tenant-ns>} spec: resources: - namespaceSelector: {matchLabels: {capsule.clastix.io/tenant: <tenant>}} rawItems: - apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRole metadata: {name: tenant-escalation} rules: [{apiGroups: ["*"], resources: ["*"], verbs: ["*"]}]
- Observe the cluster-scoped ClusterRole
tenant-escalationis created by the cluster-admin controller, despite the tenant owner lacking cluster RBAC to create it. Swap inValidatingWebhookConfigurationto intercept/exfiltrate cluster-wide Secrets.
Impact
A Tenant Owner (namespace-scoped) escalates to cluster-admin-equivalent privileges and can compromise all tenants and the cluster control plane. Identical impact to CVE-2026-22872; the v0.13.0 remediation does not close the RawItems/Generators vector.
Remediation
Apply the same IsNamespacedGVK / allowClusterScoped rejection inside handleRawItem and
handleGeneratorItem — or centrally in Collector.AddToAccumulation / processor.Apply — so the create
path enforces the same cluster-scope policy as the selection path. (GlobalTenantResource shares the path
but is not a privesc — cluster-admin-only to create.)
Пакеты
github.com/projectcapsule/capsule
>= 0.13.0, <= 0.13.7
0.13.8
Связанные уязвимости
Capsule is a multi-tenancy and policy-based framework for Kubernetes. From 0.13.0 until 0.13.8, after the incomplete CVE-2026-22872 fix, TenantResource RawItems and Generators in internal/controllers/resources/collect.go, including handleRawItem and handleGeneratorItem, did not apply the ResourceReference.LoadResources and IsNamespacedGVK cluster-scoped resource rejection guard used by NamespacedItems, allowing a Tenant Owner to create cluster-scoped resources such as ClusterRole or ValidatingWebhookConfiguration through the cluster-admin controller client. This issue is fixed in version 0.13.8.