What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-7195: Operator-sdk: privilege escalation due to incorrect permissions of /etc/passwd

Description

Early versions of Operator-SDK provided an insecure method to allow operator containers to run in environments that used a random UID. Operator-SDK before 0.15.2 provided a script, user_setup, which modifies the permissions of the /etc/passwd file to 664 during build time. Developers who used Operator-SDK before 0.15.2 to scaffold their operator may still be impacted by this if the insecure user_setup script is still being used to build new container images. In affected images, the /etc/passwd file is created during build time with group-writable permissions and a group ownership of root (gid=0). An attacker who can execute commands within an affected container, even as a non-root user, may be able to leverage their membership in the root group to modify the /etc/passwd file. This could allow the attacker to add a new user with any arbitrary UID, including UID 0, leading to full root privileges within the container.

Affected products

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: operator-framework operator-sdk 0.15.2; Red Hat multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.6 v2.6; Red Hat multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.7 v2.7; Red Hat multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.8 1765669648, 1765866268, 1765872398, 1765872399; Red Hat multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.9 v2.9; Red Hat OpenShift Compliance Operator 1 1.8.0, 1768172669; Red Hat OpenShift File Integrity Operator - FIO 1 v1.3; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.11 v2.11; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.12 1773090513, 1773259164, 1773259182, 1773285089; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.13 1767569821, 1767656229, 1767829032; Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.14 1769720041, 1769721579, 1770336554, 1770343757; Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4.14 v4.14-1764178221, v4.14-1764178222, v4.14-1764178236, v4.14-1764178261. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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