CVE-2026-96453
Description
A flaw was found in the Keycloak Admin CLI kcadm tool, which is used by administrators to manage Keycloak servers from the command line. When a custom truststore is provided to verify the server identity, the tool incorrectly accepts any self-signed certificate as long as the hostname matches. This allows a network attacker to impersonate the Keycloak server, steal administrative credentials, and perform unauthorized management actions.
Statement
The Red Hat Product Security team has assessed the severity of this vulnerability as Important, given that exploitation requires the attacker to be in a position to intercept network traffic and the administrator to be using a custom truststore configuration. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to capture administrative credentials and perform unauthorized administrative actions on the Keycloak server. The vulnerability root cause is the improper implementation of the trust strategy in the Admin CLI HTTP client, which defaults to accepting self-signed certificates when a truststore is provided.
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).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 8 | N/A | 8 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | High | N/A | High |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | Required | N/A | Required |
| Scope | Changed | N/A | Changed |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | None | N/A | None |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Authentication
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism; Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
When a certificate is invalid or malicious, it might allow an attacker to spoof a trusted entity by interfering in the communication path between the host and client. The product might connect to a malicious host while believing it is a trusted host, or the product might be deceived into accepting spoofed data that appears to originate from a trusted host.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Paul Bottinelli (Trail of Bits in collaboration with OpenAI) for reporting this issue.
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