{
  "threat_severity" : "Important",
  "public_date" : "2026-06-17T00:00:00Z",
  "bugzilla" : {
    "description" : "strimzi-cluster-operator: Cross-namespace privilege escalation via Kafka.spec.entityOperator.watchedNamespace in Strimzi",
    "id" : "2490275",
    "url" : "https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2490275"
  },
  "cvss3" : {
    "cvss3_base_score" : "8.0",
    "cvss3_scoring_vector" : "CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H",
    "status" : "verified"
  },
  "cwe" : "CWE-250",
  "details" : [ "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)." ],
  "acknowledgement" : "Red Hat would like to thank Artem Cherezov (@cherez0ff) for reporting this issue.",
  "affected_release" : [ {
    "product_name" : "Streams for Apache Kafka 3.2.1",
    "release_date" : "2026-08-12T00:00:00Z",
    "advisory" : "RHSA-2026:54435",
    "cpe" : "cpe:/a:redhat:amq_streams:3.2::el9",
    "package" : "cluster-operator"
  } ],
  "package_state" : [ {
    "product_name" : "streams for Apache Kafka 2",
    "fix_state" : "Affected",
    "package_name" : "cluster-operator",
    "cpe" : "cpe:/a:redhat:amq_streams:2"
  } ],
  "references" : [ "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-55225\nhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55225\nhttps://github.com/strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator/releases/tag/1.0.1\nhttps://github.com/strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator/security/advisories/GHSA-mw9r-p8xp-wx96" ],
  "name" : "CVE-2026-55225",
  "mitigation" : {
    "value" : "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.",
    "lang" : "en:us"
  },
  "csaw" : false
}