CVE-2026-18206

Description

A flaw was found in the keycloak-services component of Keycloak, which provides identity and access management services. The issue occurs when a realm administrator uses a wildcard domain (like *.example.com) to restrict which hosts can register or update clients. Due to improper validation, the system accepts any hostname that ends with the specified domain suffix, even if it is not a legitimate subdomain. An attacker who can control the reverse DNS of their connection can bypass these host-based restrictions, potentially allowing unauthorized client modifications.

Statement

The Red Hat Product Security team has assessed the severity of this vulnerability as Low, given that exploitation requires a specific administrative configuration and attacker control over reverse DNS resolution. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to bypass host-based restrictions for client registration and update operations. The vulnerability's root cause is improper validation of wildcard domain matches in the keycloak-services component, which fails to enforce proper subdomain boundaries.

Mitigation

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score3.73.73.7
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkNetwork
Attack ComplexityHighHighHigh
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneNone
User InteractionNoneNoneNone
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedUnchanged
ConfidentialityNoneNoneNone
Integrity ImpactLowLowLow
Availability ImpactNoneNoneNone

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)

An attacker could provide unexpected values and cause a program crash or arbitrary control of resource allocation, leading to excessive consumption of resources such as memory and CPU.

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Memory; Read Files or Directories

An attacker could read confidential data if they are able to control resource references.

Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability

Technical Impact: Modify Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

An attacker could use malicious input to modify data or possibly alter control flow in unexpected ways, including arbitrary command execution.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Paul Bottinelli (Trail of Bits) for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

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