Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Important 2026-07-27T00:00:00 virt-cdi-operator: containerized-data-importer: cdi.kubevirt.io:view aggregated ClusterRole grants create on datavolumes/source, allowing unauthorized PVC clone 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N CWE-639

In containerized-data-importer (CDI), the aggregated cdi.kubevirt.io:view ClusterRole, intended to provide read-only access to CDI resources, includes a rule granting create on the datavolumes/source subresource. CDI's DataVolume clone authorization accepts this permission as sufficient to authorize cloning the contents of any PVC the caller can name, without requiring write access to the source namespace. A user or service account bound to the view role, commonly granted cluster-wide via ClusterRoleBinding, who also has ordinary write access (edit/admin) to any single namespace, can use this to exfiltrate the contents of any PVC in the cluster into a namespace they control, bypassing namespace isolation and the read-only guarantee of the view role.

In containerized-data-importer (CDI), the aggregated cdi.kubevirt.io:view ClusterRole, intended to provide read-only access to CDI resources, includes a rule granting create on the datavolumes/source subresource. CDI's DataVolume clone authorization accepts this permission as sufficient to authorize cloning the contents of any PVC the caller can name, without requiring write access to the source namespace. A user or service account bound to the view role, commonly granted cluster-wide via ClusterRoleBinding, who also has ordinary write access (edit/admin) to any single namespace, can use this to exfiltrate the contents of any PVC in the cluster into a namespace they control, bypassing namespace isolation and the read-only guarantee of the view role.

This flaw is confirmed upstream in kubevirt/containerized-data-importer and affects all downstream consumers using CDI's default aggregated RBAC roles, including OpenShift Virtualization. It is distinct from the SSP operator's "golden images" pattern, which deliberately and correctly scopes an equivalent permission via a namespace-scoped Role/RoleBinding. Until a fix is available, cluster administrators should avoid granting cdi.kubevirt.io:view (or the built-in Kubernetes view role, which aggregates it) via cluster-wide ClusterRoleBinding. Prefer namespace-scoped RoleBindings, and audit which namespaces grant both view-equivalent access and separate edit/admin access to the same identities, since that combination is what enables cross-namespace data exfiltration. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 Affected container-native-virtualization/virt-cdi-operator Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4 Affected container-native-virtualization/virt-cdi-operator-rhel9 https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-17527 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-17527