CVE-2026-50240 — Red Hat
HIGHCVE-2026-50240 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-862 vulnerability. The records list no fixed version yet; check the vendor advisory below and apply the mitigations in the meantime.
A flaw was found in OpenShift Pipelines-as-Code (PAC). PAC does not verify whether the creator of a Repository custom resource has permission to create PipelineRuns. A namespace user…
Description
A flaw was found in OpenShift Pipelines-as-Code (PAC). PAC does not verify whether the creator of a Repository custom resource has permission to create PipelineRuns. A namespace user with only Repository and Secret create/delete permissions can cause PAC to execute attacker-controlled PipelineRuns as the auto-provisioned pipeline ServiceAccount, which carries ClusterRole/edit by default. This results in namespace-scoped privilege escalation, enabling Secret read, resource creation/modification/deletion, and potential supply chain injection in CI/CD namespaces.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
The records we use list no fixed release for CVE-2026-50240. Check the upstream advisory for a patched version, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
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.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Set legacyPipelineRbac to false in the TektonConfig custom resource. This prevents the OpenShift Pipelines operator from auto-provisioning the openshift-pipelines-edit RoleBinding that grants the pipeline ServiceAccount ClusterRole/edit in every namespace. Warning: this may break existing pipelines that rely on the pipeline ServiceAccount having edit permissions. Simply deleting the openshift-pipelines-edit RoleBinding is NOT sufficient — the operator reconciliation loop will re-create it unless legacyPipelineRbac is set to false.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-50240 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-50240 in your dependencies?
Find it across your dependency tree, including transitive dependencies.