CVE-2023-2728 — Users may be able to launch containers that bypass the mountable secrets policy

Users may be able to launch containers that bypass the mountable secrets policy enforced by the ServiceAccount admission plugin when using ephemeral containers. The policy ensures pods running with a service account may only reference secrets specified in the service account’s se

01What is this vulnerability?

Users may be able to launch containers that bypass the mountable secrets policy enforced by the ServiceAccount admission plugin when using ephemeral containers. The policy ensures pods running with a service account may only reference secrets specified in the service account’s secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Kubernetes	Kubernetes	v1.24.14, v1.25.0 - v1.25.10, v1.26.0 - v1.26.5, v1.27.0 - v1.27.2

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-07-03T20:06:11.796Z
• Last modified: 2025-02-13T16:45:20.353Z

09References

• groups.google.com — https://groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/vPWYJ_L84m8
• github.com — https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/118640
• www.openwall.com — http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/07/06/3
• security.netapp.com — https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230803-0004/