Auth bypass in Akuity Kargo

CVE-2026-27111

Kargo manages and automates the promotion of software artifacts. From v1.9.0 to v1.9.2, Kargo's authorization model includes a promote verb -- a non-standard Kubernetes "dolphin verb" -- that gates the ability to advance Freight through a promotion pipeline. This verb exists to separate the ability to manage promotion-related resources from the ability to trigger promotions, enabling fine-grained access control over what is often a sensitive operation. The promote verb is correctly enforced in Kargo's legacy gRPC API. However, three endpoints in the newer REST API omit this check, relying only on standard Kubernetes RBAC for the underlying resource operations (patch on freights/status or create on promotions). This permits users who hold those standard permissions -- but who were deliberately not granted promote -- to bypass the intended authorization boundary. The affected endpoints are /v1beta1/projects/{project}/freight/{freight}/approve, /v1beta1/projects/{project}/stages/{stage}/promotions, and /v1beta1/projects/{project}/stages/{stage}/promotions/downstream. This vulnerability is fixed in v1.9.3.

Vulnerability class: Broken Access Control

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.0 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (19.2th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 19th percentile — 19.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-27111: held from 0.002 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-27111?
CVE-2026-27111 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Akuity Kargo, classified under Missing Authorization. CVSS score: 5.0/10. Published 2026-02-20.
How severe is CVE-2026-27111?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.0 out of 10.