Bug 2524894 (CVE-2026-78234)

Summary: CVE-2026-78234 hawtio-operator: hawtio-operator: Service-CA signing oracle allows arbitrary-CN certificate issuance to namespace edit users
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: unspecifiedCC: abrianik, ggrzybek, jraez, parichar, security-response-team, tasato
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-27 09:53:44 UTC
C-1 from Project Glasswing security audit of hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key and mints client certificates with a Subject CN supplied by the unprivileged author of the namespaced Hawtio CR. Any principal holding the edit or admin aggregated role in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject, enabling impersonation of any in-cluster service identity. Source: hawtio-operator-security-audit.json#C-1.