Red Hat has disclosed a significant security flaw in OpenShift GitOps that could allow authenticated users to take complete control of a cluster.
Assigned the identifier CVE-2025-13888, this vulnerability allows namespace administrators to elevate their privileges beyond their intended scope, potentially gaining root access to the entire system.
| Category | Information |
|---|---|
| CVE ID | CVE-2025-13888 |
| Vendor Severity | Important |
| CVSS v3.1 Score | 9.1 (Critical) |
| Attack Vector | Network (AV:N) |
While Red Hat has rated the severity as “Important” rather than “Critical,” the technical impact is severe for environments where namespace administrators are not fully trusted.
Technical Escalation to Root Access
The vulnerability stems from an issue in how OpenShift GitOps handles permissions for ArgoCD Custom Resources.
In a standard setup, namespace administrators are restricted to managing resources within their specific namespace.
However, this flaw allows a malicious administrator to create specific Custom Resources that deceive the system into granting them elevated permissions in other namespaces.
Once these elevated permissions are obtained, the attacker can deploy privileged workloads that can run on controller nodes.
This effectively grants them root access to the entire cluster, enabling them to bypass security controls, access sensitive data, or disrupt operations.
The attack vector is classified as “Network” based. However, it is essential to note that exploitation requires the attacker to possess valid namespace administrator credentials already.
This requirement limits the threat to insider threats or compromised administrator accounts rather than external, unauthenticated attackers.
Red Hat has released security updates to address this vulnerability across supported versions of OpenShift GitOps.
The fix ensures that the system properly validates permissions when creating ArgoCD resources, preventing the privilege escalation path.
Organizations using OpenShift GitOps versions 1.16, 1.17, or 1.18 should apply the available patches immediately.
Security teams are advised to audit their cluster configurations and review the list of users with namespace administrator privileges.
Since the exploit relies on an authenticated user abusing their rights, strictly limiting and monitoring administrative access remains a critical defense layer alongside applying the software updates.
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