Resource exhaustion in Kyverno
CVE-2026-23881
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Versions prior to 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 have unbounded memory consumption in Kyverno's policy engine that allows users with policy creation privileges to cause denial of service by crafting policies that exponentially amplify string data through context variables. Versions 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 contain a patch for the vulnerability.
Published · last modified .
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.7 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.006 (46.8th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 47th percentile — 46.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.
EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.006 · change: +0.001
Affected products
- Kyverno — versions < 1.15.3, >= 1.16.0, < 1.16.3
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GHSA-r2rj-wwm5-x6mq (Exploit, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory)
- github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/7a651be3a8c78dcabfbf4178b8d89026bf3b850f (Patch)
- github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/f5617f60920568a301740485472bf704892175b7 (Patch)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-23881?
- CVE-2026-23881 is a high-severity vulnerability in Kyverno, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.7/10. Published 2026-01-27.
- How severe is CVE-2026-23881?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.7 out of 10.