KEDA: Privilege escalation from namespace admin to cluster admin via KEDA TriggerAuthentication

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

9.9 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS

• CVE-2026-77524: 0.60% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 48.84 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Summary A namespace admin who creates a TriggerAuthentication and a ScaledObject in their own namespace can make the KEDA operator send its own ServiceAccount token to a tenant-controlled URL. That token holds [""]/[""] get cluster-wide, so it reads every Secret in every namespace, plus batch/jobs and horizontalpodautoscalers create/delete cluster-wide, /scale update on any workload, validatingwebhookconfigurations update (rewrite or disable cluster admission), and apiservices update (hijack aggregated API routing). This is effectively privilege escalation from namespace admin to cluster admin in real environments: a cluster-wide Secret read alone is enough to find a token for a more privileged ServiceAccount, and the cluster-wide batch/jobs create lets the attacker run a workload in any namespace whose Pod Security Admission level permits it (or that is PSA-exempt, such as kube-system , kyverno) to reach the node filesystem and a control-plane kubeconfig. This is an incomplete fix…

Published by the source

15 Oct 2026, 20:19 UTC

Last modified by the source

19 Oct 2026, 21:31 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:32 UTC

1. Revision 3 · amended · 26 Oct 2026

   Amended from ghsa record GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm

2. Revision 2 · amended · 24 Oct 2026

   Amended from osv record GO-2026-6776

3. Revision 1 · created · 24 Oct 2026

   Published from osv record GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2026-77524

Advisory: KEDA: Privilege escalation from namespace admin to cluster admin via KEDA TriggerAuthentication
IDs: CVE-2026-77524, GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2026-77524 (revision 3, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:32 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: Critical (CVSS 9.9)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Partial vendor fix; fixed versions by package: github.com/kedacore/keda/v2 2.21.0. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go github.com/kedacore/keda/v2: affected < 2.21.0; fixed in 2.21.0
- Go github.com/kedacore/keda: affected <= 1.5.0

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go github.com/kedacore/keda/v2: check the installed version with your package manager.
- Go github.com/kedacore/keda: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
No complete vendor fix is recorded. Follow the primary source's mitigation guidance and check this record again before closing anything.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on github.com/kedacore/keda/v2, github.com/kedacore/keda.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/GO-2026-6776 (OSV record GO-2026-6776 lists affected ranges: Go github.com/kedacore/keda >=0; Go github.com/kedacore/keda/v2 >=0 <2.21.0 (fixed))
- Verified: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm (OSV record GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm lists affected ranges: Go github.com/kedacore/keda >=0 =0 <2.21.0 (fixed))
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-637c-6jxx-4rwm lists affected ranges: Go github.com/kedacore/keda >=0 =0 <2.21.0)

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