CVE-2026-50240
Description
A flaw was found in OpenShift Pipelines-as-Code (PAC). PAC does not verify whether the creator of a Repository custom resource has permission to create PipelineRuns. A namespace user with only Repository and Secret create/delete permissions can cause PAC to execute attacker-controlled PipelineRuns as the auto-provisioned pipeline ServiceAccount, which carries ClusterRole/edit by default. This results in namespace-scoped privilege escalation, enabling Secret read, resource creation/modification/deletion, and potential supply chain injection in CI/CD namespaces.
Mitigation
Set legacyPipelineRbac to false in the TektonConfig custom resource. This prevents the OpenShift Pipelines operator from auto-provisioning the openshift-pipelines-edit RoleBinding that grants the pipeline ServiceAccount ClusterRole/edit in every namespace. Warning: this may break existing pipelines that rely on the pipeline ServiceAccount having edit permissions. Simply deleting the openshift-pipelines-edit RoleBinding is NOT sufficient — the operator reconciliation loop will re-create it unless legacyPipelineRbac is set to false.
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 Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 8.8 | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | N/A |
| Privileges Required | Low | N/A | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | N/A |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Read Files or Directories
An attacker could read sensitive data, either by reading the data directly from a data store that is not restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to read the data.
Integrity
Technical Impact: Modify Application Data; Modify Files or Directories
An attacker could modify sensitive data, either by writing the data directly to a data store that is not restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to write the data.
Access Control
Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism
An attacker could gain privileges by modifying or reading critical data directly, or by accessing privileged functionality.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)
An attacker could gain unauthorized access to resources on the system and excessively consume those resources, leading to a denial of service.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Christopher Lusk (North Echo Security Research) for reporting this issue.
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