CVE-2026-66786Submariner: submariner: ipsec.conf stanza injection via remote-supplied cablename and subnets

Description

A flaw was found in submariner. In cert-auth mode, the connection configuration is built using free-form strings from the Custom Resource Definition (CRD) without proper validation. A malicious cluster can exploit this by publishing a CableName that includes newlines and ipsec.conf directives. This allows an attacker to inject arbitrary configuration parameters or execute commands through leftupdown hooks, leading to remote code execution as root on the gateway node.

Timeline

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

1.4% · top 28% 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: Critical 9.1.

Affected products

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670439 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670231 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670243 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670508 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670233 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670912 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.16

  • unaffected 1790670254 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788023916 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788023940 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788105072 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788043964 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788043961 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788073481 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.17

  • unaffected 1788043970 – < *

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2

  All versions: affected

• Red Hat · Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2

  All versions: affected

What to do

Workaround: If Submariner certificate-based IPsec authentication mode is enabled (`IPSecCertAuthMode: true` in the SubmarinerConfig), administrators can mitigate this flaw by switching to the default pre-shared key (PSK) authentication mode. Set `IPSecCertAuthMode: false` (or remove the field to use its default value) in the SubmarinerConfig CR and redeploy the Submariner gateway pods. PSK mode provides equivalent inter-cluster IPsec tunnel encryption and is not affected by this vulnerability. Note that disabling cert-auth mode means Submariner will no longer integrate with OVN IPsec's certificate infrastructure and will manage its own PSK-based authentication independently.

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-2026-70247 (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-2026-66786](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2026-66786.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-66786)

Record last updated 19 Oct 2026, 17:30 UTC.