Vulnerability in Kyverno

CVE-2026-40868

Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. Prior to 1.16.4, kyverno’s apiCall servicecall helper implicitly injects Authorization: Bearer ... using the kyverno controller serviceaccount token when a policy does not explicitly set an Authorization header. Because context.apiCall.service.url is policy-controlled, this can send the kyverno serviceaccount token to an attacker-controlled endpoint (confused deputy). Namespaced policies are blocked from servicecall usage by the namespaced urlPath gate in pkg/engine/apicall/apiCall.go, so this report is scoped to ClusterPolicy and global context usage. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.16.4.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.1 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (33.2th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 33rd percentile — 33.2% 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-2026-40868: held from 0.003 to 0.004.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.004 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-40868?
CVE-2026-40868 is a high-severity vulnerability in Kyverno, classified under CWE-922. CVSS score: 8.1/10. Published 2026-04-21.
How severe is CVE-2026-40868?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.1 out of 10.