CVE-2026-65834 — capsule

Summary

CapsuleConfiguration.Spec.NodeMetadata.ForbiddenLabels.Regex and ForbiddenAnnotations.Regex are never validated by any admission webhook. A Cluster Admin can persist a malformed regex to etcd without being blocked. Once stored, every Node CREATE, UPDATE, or PATCH request triggers regexp.MustCompile() in pkg/api/forbidden_list.go:36, which panics and crashes the node admission webhook — causing a cluster-wide Denial of Service for all Node operations.

Root cause

internal/webhook/tenant/validation/ contains dedicated regex validators for every Tenant regex field (hostname, storageclass, ingressclass, containerregistry, etc.). internal/webhook/cfg/ contains no regex validator at all — only owners.go, serviceaccount.go, and warnings.go.

The downstream consumer internal/webhook/node/user_metadata.go calls:

// line 131
matched = forbiddenLabels.RegexMatch(label)
// line 150
matched = forbiddenAnnotations.RegexMatch(annotation)

Which routes to pkg/api/forbidden_list.go:36:

func (in ForbiddenListSpec) RegexMatch(value string) (ok bool) {
    if len(in.Regex) > 0 {
        ok = regexp.MustCompile(in.Regex).MatchString(value) // ← panics on invalid regex
    }
    return ok
}

Unlike regexp.Compile, regexp.MustCompile panics instead of returning an error. Since no webhook validates the CapsuleConfiguration regex fields before storage, a malformed value reaches MustCompile on every Node admission request.

Comparison with existing CVEs

GHSA-f94q-w3w8-cj67 and GHSA-gxjc-74v5-3vx3 affect individual Tenant fields — their validators existed but checked the wrong field. This issue is different: no validator exists at all for CapsuleConfiguration regex fields, and the blast radius is cluster-wide (all Nodes), not scoped to one tenant.

PoC

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "regexp"
)

type ForbiddenListSpec struct{ Regex string }

// Exact copy of pkg/api/forbidden_list.go:34-38
func (in ForbiddenListSpec) RegexMatch(value string) bool {
    if len(in.Regex) > 0 {
        return regexp.MustCompile(in.Regex).MatchString(value)
    }
    return false
}

func main() {
    // 1. cfg webhook has no validator → invalid regex stored in etcd
    // (no webhook in internal/webhook/cfg/ checks regex fields)

    // 2. Stored malformed regex loaded from CapsuleConfiguration
    forbidden := ForbiddenListSpec{Regex: `[invalid-regex(`}

    // 3. node/user_metadata.go:131 called on every Node admission request
    defer func() {
        if r := recover(); r != nil {
            fmt.Printf("PANIC: %v\n", r)
            // Output: PANIC: regexp: Compile(`[invalid-regex(`): error parsing regexp: missing closing ]
        }
    }()
    forbidden.RegexMatch("kubernetes.io/hostname")
}

Expected output:

PANIC: regexp: Compile(`[invalid-regex(`): error parsing regexp: missing closing ]: `[invalid-regex(`

Fix

Add a node_metadata_regex.go handler to internal/webhook/cfg/ following the same pattern as forbidden_annotations_regex.go:

package cfg

import (
    "context"
    "regexp"

    "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/client"
    "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook/admission"

    capsulev1beta2 "github.com/projectcapsule/capsule/api/v1beta2"
    ad "github.com/projectcapsule/capsule/pkg/runtime/admission"
    "github.com/projectcapsule/capsule/pkg/runtime/events"
    "github.com/projectcapsule/capsule/pkg/runtime/handlers"
)

type nodeMetadataRegexHandler struct{}

func NodeMetadataRegexHandler() handlers.TypedHandler[*capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration] {
    return &nodeMetadataRegexHandler{}
}

func (h *nodeMetadataRegexHandler) OnCreate(
    _ client.Client,
    _ client.Reader,
    cfg *capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration,
    _ admission.Decoder,
    _ events.EventRecorder,
) handlers.Func {
    return func(_ context.Context, req admission.Request) *admission.Response {
        return h.validate(cfg, req)
    }
}

func (h *nodeMetadataRegexHandler) OnDelete(
    client.Client,
    client.Reader,
    *capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration,
    admission.Decoder,
    events.EventRecorder,
) handlers.Func {
    return func(context.Context, admission.Request) *admission.Response {
        return nil
    }
}

func (h *nodeMetadataRegexHandler) OnUpdate(
    _ client.Client,
    _ client.Reader,
    cfg *capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration,
    _ *capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration,
    _ admission.Decoder,
    _ events.EventRecorder,
) handlers.Func {
    return func(_ context.Context, req admission.Request) *admission.Response {
        return h.validate(cfg, req)
    }
}

func (h *nodeMetadataRegexHandler) validate(cfg *capsulev1beta2.CapsuleConfiguration, req admission.Request) *admission.Response {
    if cfg.Spec.NodeMetadata == nil {
        return nil
    }

    expressions := map[string]string{
        "labels":      cfg.Spec.NodeMetadata.ForbiddenLabels.Regex,
        "annotations": cfg.Spec.NodeMetadata.ForbiddenAnnotations.Regex,
    }

    for scope, expression := range expressions {
        if expression == "" {
            continue
        }

        if _, err := regexp.Compile(expression); err != nil {
            return ad.Denyf(
                "unable to compile regex %q for forbidden %s: %v",
                expression,
                scope,
                err,
            )
        }
    }

    return nil
}

  Step 2: Register the handler in cmd/controller/main.go:

  route.ConfigValidation(
      cfgvalidation.Handler(cfg,
          cfgvalidation.WarningHandler(),
          cfgvalidation.ServiceAccountHandler(),
          cfgvalidation.OwnerHandler(),
          cfgvalidation.NodeMetadataRegexHandler(), // ← ADD THIS LINE
      ),
  ),

Impact

A Cluster Admin (or compromised admin account) can update CapsuleConfiguration with a malformed NodeMetadata regex (e.g., [invalid-regex(). The update is accepted without validation and persisted to etcd. Once stored, every subsequent Node admission request triggers regexp.MustCompile() with the invalid pattern, causing the Capsule node webhook to panic.

Affected operations (cluster-wide):

• Node labeling, annotations, and taints (kubectl label/annotate/taint node)
• Cluster autoscaler operations (cannot register or remove nodes)
• Cloud provider node lifecycle management (metadata sync, status updates)
• Node maintenance workflows (cordon, drain, uncordon)

Severity: This is a cluster-wide Denial of Service affecting all Node infrastructure operations. Unlike tenant-scoped CVEs (GHSA-f94q-w3w8-cj67, GHSA-gxjc-74v5-3vx3) that impact only Ingress or Namespace operations within a single tenant, this vulnerability blocks the entire cluster's ability to manage nodes.

The cluster cannot scale, perform maintenance, or process any node metadata changes until a Cluster Admin manually corrects the CapsuleConfiguration—requiring direct kubectl access with valid YAML.