Privilege escalation in Strimzi Strimzi-Kafka-Operator

CVE-2026-55225

Strimzi provides a way to run an Apache Kafka cluster on Kubernetes or OpenShift in various deployment configurations. In Strimzi 1.0.0 and earlier, an attacker who can create a Kafka custom resource can set Kafka.spec.entityOperator watchedNamespace to a target namespace, causing the Cluster Operator to create a Role with full Secret CRUD permissions there and bind it to the Entity Operator ServiceAccount in the attacker's namespace. The attacker can mint a token for that ServiceAccount and read or write Secrets in any target namespace where the Cluster Operator has been granted permissions, regardless of STRIMZI_NAMESPACE. This issue is fixed in versions 1.0.1 and 1.1.0.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation