NIST deprecates RSA-2048 from 2030. Find every one of them before attackers do.
🐹
🐹 Go
Not in CISA KEV
MEDIUM severity

CVE-2026-39961 — aiven-operator

MEDIUMFix: aiven/aiven-operator@032c9ba

CVE-2026-39961 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.8) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in github.com/aiven/aiven-operator. A fix is available for github.com/aiven/aiven-operator — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Aiven Operator has cross-namespace secret exfiltration via ClickhouseUser connInfoSecretSource

Also known asGHSA-99j8-wv67-4c72GO-2026-5283
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Nov 5, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

  • CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-39961.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs34th percentile — riskier than 34% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.33%0.66%0.98%0.0%0.4%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐹github.com/aiven/aiven-operator

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

Impact

A developer with create permission on ClickhouseUser CRDs in their own namespace can exfiltrate secrets from any other namespace — production database credentials, API keys, service tokens — with a single kubectl apply. The operator reads the victim's secret using its ClusterRole and writes the password into a new secret in the attacker's namespace.

The operator acts as a confused deputy: its ServiceAccount has cluster-wide secret read/write (aiven-operator-role ClusterRole), and it trusts user-supplied namespace values in spec.connInfoSecretSource.namespace without validation. No admission webhook enforces this boundary — the ServiceUser webhook returns nil, and no ClickhouseUser webhook exists.

Patches

This vulnerability is resolved in version 0.37.0. We recommend all users update as soon as possible.

Credits

Credits to Andrés Cruciani for finding and reporting the bug through our bug bounty program

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐹Gogithub.com/aiven/aiven-operator≥ 0.31.0&&< 0.37.00.37.0go get github.com/aiven/aiven-operator@v0.37.0

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
aiven operatoraiven
≥ 0.31.0 && < 0.37.0
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/aiven/aiven-operator, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update github.com/aiven/aiven-operator to 0.37.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-39961 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact A developer with create permission on ClickhouseUser CRDs in their own namespace can exfiltrate secrets from any other namespace — production database credentials, API keys, service tokens — with a single kubectl apply. The operator reads the victim's secret using its ClusterRole and writes the password into a new secret in the attacker's namespace. The operator acts as a confused deputy: its ServiceAccount has cluster-wide secret read/write (aiven-operator-role ClusterRole), and it trusts user-supplied namespace values in spec.connInfoSecretSource.namespace without validation. No
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2026-39961 in your dependencies?

Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works
CVE-2026-39961: aiven-operator — Fixed in 0.37.0