What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-15789: Microk8s Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2020-04-08 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-269

Description

Privilege escalation vulnerability in MicroK8s allows a low privilege user with local access to obtain root access to the host by provisioning a privileged container. Fixed in MicroK8s 1.15.3.

Affected products

• Canonical MicroK8s: before 1.15.3 — fixed in 1.15.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Canonical MicroK8s 1.15.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://discuss.kubernetes.io/t/explicit-use-of-sudo-in-microk8s-cli/7605
• https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s/pull/590
• https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/2019/CVE-2019-15789.html
• https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/advisories/microk8s-privilege-escalation
• https://discuss.kubernetes.io/t/explicit-use-of-sudo-in-microk8s-cli/7605
• https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s/pull/590
• https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/2019/CVE-2019-15789.html
• https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/advisories/microk8s-privilege-escalation

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