[ CVE-2026-77524 · Published 14 Oct 2026 ]
KEDA: Privilege escalation from namespace admin to cluster admin via KEDA TriggerAuthentication
[ Why it matters ]Priority signals
- Public proof-of-concept exploit exists (CISA SSVC)
- Critical severity: CVSS 9.9
[ Description ]Official description
KEDA is a Kubernetes-based Event Driven Autoscaling component. In version 2.20.2 and earlier, a namespace administrator who can create TriggerAuthentication and ScaledObject resources can set hashiCorpVault.address to a tenant-controlled endpoint and select Kubernetes authentication without an explicit credential. KEDA then uses the operator pod's projected ServiceAccount token and sends it to that endpoint as a Vault login credential. The JWT-shape filter from the prior CVE-2025-68476 remediation accepts the operator token because its subject is a Kubernetes ServiceAccount, so the attacker can obtain the operator's cluster-wide permissions, including broad Secret reads and workload or admission-related operations. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.21.0.
[ Fixes ]Fixes and patches
- github.com/kedacore/keda/v2 2.21.0Fixed version · GitHub Advisories · go package github.com/kedacore/keda/v2: upgrade to 2.21.0 or later (affected < 2.21.0)
[ Packages ]Affected open-source packages
- github.com/kedacore/keda goAffected <= 1.5.0 · GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm
- github.com/kedacore/keda/v2 goAffected < 2.21.0 · fixed in 2.21.0 · GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm