# CVE-2026-39961: Aiven Operator has cross-namespace secret exfiltration via ClickhouseUser connInfoSecretSource

> CVE-2026-39961: Aiven Operator has cross-namespace secret exfiltration via ClickhouseUser connInfoSecretSource. CVSS 6.8 (CVSS 3.1).

Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-39961
Last updated: 2026-06-17T10:42:49Z

- Published: 2026-04-09 17:14 UTC · Updated: 2026-06-17 10:42 UTC · Assigner: GitHub\_M
- CVSS: 6.8 (CVSS 3.1) · Severity: Medium · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
- EPSS: 0.39%, 33th percentile (scored 2026-10-25)
- CISA KEV: no
- CWE: CWE-269, CWE-441

## Description

Aiven Operator allows you to provision and manage Aiven Services from your Kubernetes cluster. From 0.31.0 to before 0.37.0, 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. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.37.0.

## Affected vendors and products

- aiven: aiven-operator

## Tracked companies

- [Aiven](https://rewindex.com/company/aiven.md)

## References

- [CVE record on cve.org](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-39961)
- [NVD entry](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-39961)
- [https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/commit/032c9ba63257fdd2fddfb7f73f71830e371ff182](https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/commit/032c9ba63257fdd2fddfb7f73f71830e371ff182)
- [https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/releases/tag/v0.37.0](https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/releases/tag/v0.37.0)
- [https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/security/advisories/GHSA-99j8-wv67-4c72](https://github.com/aiven/aiven-operator/security/advisories/GHSA-99j8-wv67-4c72)

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_Sources: CVE records from the CVE Program (cve.org). CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. (https://www.cve.org/) This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. (https://nvd.nist.gov/) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog from CISA. (https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) EPSS scores from FIRST (Exploit Prediction Scoring System). (https://www.first.org/epss/)_


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-39961 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-39961.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2026-39961 · Data licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Generated 2026-10-26T03:13:24.096Z