CVE-2026-96460
Description
A flaw was found in the token exchange mechanism of Keycloak. When using Standard Token Exchange V2, the system issues new tokens with a fresh lifetime based on the requester clients configuration instead of limiting it to the original tokens expiration. This issue allows an authenticated requester to indefinitely extend access for service accounts by repeatedly exchanging tokens, even if the original client has been disabled by an administrator.
Statement
The Red Hat Product Security team has assessed the severity of this vulnerability as Moderate, given that exploitation requires the attacker to already possess a valid exchanged service-account token and the credentials of an authorized requester client. Successful exploitation allows an attacker to maintain persistent access to resources indefinitely, bypassing administrative revocation of the origin client. The vulnerability's root cause is the failure to bound exchanged token lifetimes by the original subject token's expiration.
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 | 5.4 | N/A | 5.4 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | Low | N/A | Low |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | Low | N/A | Low |
| Integrity Impact | Low | N/A | Low |
| Availability Impact | None | N/A | None |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Access Control
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism
An incorrect implementation may allow authentication to be bypassed.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Stian Thorgersen (IBM) for reporting this issue.
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