Bug 2483727 (CVE-2026-10533) - CVE-2026-10533 openshift: openshift: non-admin user can bypass ResourceQuota and flood etcd with events causing cluster-wide API degradation
Summary: CVE-2026-10533 openshift: openshift: non-admin user can bypass ResourceQuota ...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-10533
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-06-01 11:42 UTC by Stoyan Nikolov
Modified: 2026-06-09 08:58 UTC (History)
0 users

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Description Stoyan Nikolov 2026-06-01 11:42:47 UTC
The OpenShift Container Platform ResourceQuota controller does not count completed pods (restartPolicy: Never, phase Succeeded) against the pod quota. Additionally, Kubernetes events generated by pod lifecycle operations are not subject to any quota or rate limit. A non-admin user with pod creation privileges can deploy a control pod using the default deployer ServiceAccount that continuously spawns short-lived child pods (150ms sleep, then complete). Each child pod generates events, frees its quota slot on completion, and allows the next pod to be created. In testing, a single control pod generates approximately 43,000 events per hour. With a 3-hour event TTL, this produces ~130,000 events from a single namespace, which is sufficient to cause etcd pressure and API server degradation. The attack requires only the ability to deploy a pod — no elevated privileges, quota changes, or cross-namespace access. An administrator can remediate by deleting events and completed pods, and events expire naturally via the 3-hour TTL.


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