CVE-2026-18608Data-science-pipelines-operator: dspo: operator clusterrole grants pods/exec:*, kubeflow.org */*, and clusterrole/binding crud cluster-wide

Description

A flaw was found in the Data Science Pipelines Operator (DSPO). The operator's ClusterRole, which defines its permissions, includes extensive privileges beyond what is necessary for its operation. These excessive permissions, such as the ability to execute commands within pods and manage cluster-wide roles, could be exploited. If the DSPO pod were compromised, an attacker could leverage these privileges to gain full administrative control over the entire Kubernetes cluster.

Timeline

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.70% · top 46% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.7.

Affected products

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 2.25

  • unaffected 1785189332 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 2.25

  • unaffected 1788182334 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.3

  • unaffected 1785187936 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4

  • unaffected 1784833428 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4

  • unaffected 1787002057 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.5

  • unaffected 1786552271 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.5

  • unaffected 1786552250 – < *

What to do

Workaround: To reduce the attack surface, administrators should review and modify the `ClusterRole` associated with the Data Science Pipelines Operator (DSPO) to remove unnecessary permissions. Specifically, restrict or remove permissions for `pods/exec`, `kubeflow.org */*`, `seldondeployments *`, and broad `apiGroups:'*'` for deployments and services. The operator's `ClusterRole` should be limited to only the required resources such as `apps/deployments`, `services`, `secrets`, `configmaps`, `roles/rolebindings`, `routes`, `networkpolicies`, `servicemonitors`, and DSPA/Argo CRDs. Applying these changes may require restarting the DSPO pod for the updated permissions to take effect and could impact operator functionality if not carefully validated.

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• EUVD EUVD-2026-55812 (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2026-18608](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2026-18608.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-18608)

Record last updated 21 Sept 2026, 10:24 UTC.