CVE-2023-5408: Openshift: modification of node role labels

Severity: high (CVSS 7.2 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-11-02 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-269

Description

A privilege escalation flaw was found in the node restriction admission plugin of the kubernetes api server of OpenShift. A remote attacker who modifies the node role label could steer workloads from the control plane and etcd nodes onto different worker nodes and gain broader access to the cluster.

Affected products

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.18: 4.11, 4.12, 4.13, 4.14

References

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5006
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:6130
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:6842
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:7479
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-5408
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2242173
https://github.com/openshift/kubernetes/pull/1736
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:5006
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:6130
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:6842
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2023:7479
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-5408

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