CVE-2026-61850 PUBLISHED

Kargo: Privilege escalation via Project RBAC management in the Kargo API

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 10.07.2026 Published: 30.10.2026 Updated: 30.10.2026

Kargo manages and automates the promotion of software artifacts. From 0.6.0 until 1.8.14, 1.9.9, and 1.10.8, two authorization flaws in the project-scoped RBAC API let an authenticated user with delegated permission to manage a Project's Roles or ServiceAccounts confer permissions exceeding the user's own. A user authorized to edit Roles can create, replace, or add rules granting permissions not held by the user; a user authorized to edit a Role's ServiceAccount can bind an identity, including the user's own, to a more powerful Role. A Kargo Role comprises a ServiceAccount, Role, and RoleBinding in the Project namespace. Changes are written using the API server's broadly privileged credentials after only a coarse resource-kind edit check, rather than checking each permission being conferred. This permits escalation to Project-administrator access, disclosure of Project Secrets and credentials, and modification or deletion of Project resources. Stolen Git, container-registry, or Helm-registry credentials can extend confidentiality and integrity impacts to those external systems. Escalation remains limited to Projects where the attacker already has RBAC-management delegation and does not itself grant cluster-wide or cross-Project access. Default non-administrator roles do not permit these operations; exploitation requires an administrator-created custom role granting the relevant permissions and control of an account assigned that role. This issue is fixed in versions 1.8.14, 1.9.9, and 1.10.8.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:L
CVSS Score: 9.3

Product Status

Vendor akuity
Product kargo
Versions
  • Version >= 0.6.0, < 1.8.14 is affected
  • Version >= 1.9.0-rc.1, < 1.9.9 is affected
  • Version >= 1.10.0-rc.1, < 1.10.8 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management CWE