CVE-2026-78234: Cert Validation Flaw (CVSS 9.9)

Description

A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components.

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CVSS v3.1 Score

9.9

CRITICAL

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS — Exploit Prediction

0.0021

Probability of exploitation

0.12%

Percentile rank

EPSS estimates the probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. A higher score means more likely to be exploited.

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-295 CWE-295

References

Other References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-78234 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2524894

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-78234? +

A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.9 (CRITICAL).

How severe is CVE-2026-78234? +

CVE-2026-78234 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.9 out of 10, rated CRITICAL. This is a critical vulnerability that should be patched immediately. The EPSS score is 0.0021, placing it in the 0th percentile for exploitation probability.

How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-78234? +

You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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