What is CVE-2026-76654?

CVE-2026-76654 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Kubernetes, classified under Improper Link Resolution Before File Access. CVSS score: 5.8/10. Published 2026-10-26.

How severe is CVE-2026-76654?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.8 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Kubernetes

CVE-2026-76654

An NTLM coercion vulnerability exists on Windows nodes when the subPath supplied in a pod's volumeMounts is set to a symbolic link that points to an attacker-controlled network share. When a kubelet resolves symlinks, it does not reject a target that resolves to a UNC path. As a result, the kubelet will transparently attempt to authenticate to the share using NTLM. This allows an attacker to obtain the NetNTLMv2 hash of the account under which the kubelet is running. An attacker could then attempt to crack the hash to retrieve the corresponding password or relay it to impersonate the node, if the node is domain-joined.

Published 2026-10-26 · last modified 2026-10-27.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.8 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

No EPSS score from FIRST.org yet. New CVEs usually get one within a few days; no score means no signal yet, not low risk. How EPSS works.

Affected products

Kubernetes

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-59 — Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

References

github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/142098 (issue-tracking)
groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/Wkv04IFzW8g (mailing-list)
af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-76654?: CVE-2026-76654 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Kubernetes, classified under Improper Link Resolution Before File Access. CVSS score: 5.8/10. Published 2026-10-26.
How severe is CVE-2026-76654?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.8 out of 10.