How severe is CVE-2026-78234?

CVE-2026-78234 has a CVSS 3.x base score of 9.9, rated critical severity. It is exploitable over network with low attack complexity, requires low privileges and no user interaction. Impact on confidentiality is high, integrity high, and availability high.

Is CVE-2026-78234 being actively exploited?

It is not currently listed in CISA's KEV catalog. Its EPSS exploit-prediction score is 0% (12th percentile), an estimate of the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

How do I fix CVE-2026-78234?

Review the linked vendor and NVD advisories for patched versions and mitigations, then upgrade or apply the recommended workaround. Given its critical severity, prioritise patching exposed systems.

When was CVE-2026-78234 published?

CVE-2026-78234 was published on 2026-09-08.

CVE-2026-78234

CVE-2026-78234 is a critical-severity vulnerability with a CVSS 3.x base score of 9.9. It is not currently listed as actively exploited by CISA, and its EPSS exploit-prediction score is low. The underlying weakness is classified as CWE-295.

Key facts

Severity: Critical (CVSS 3.x base score 9.9)
EPSS exploit prediction: 0% (12th percentile)
Actively exploited: Not listed in CISA KEV
Weakness: CWE-295
Published: 2026-09-08
Last modified: 2026-09-08

Description

A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components.

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-78234?: A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components.
How severe is CVE-2026-78234?: CVE-2026-78234 has a CVSS 3.x base score of 9.9, rated critical severity. It is exploitable over network with low attack complexity, requires low privileges and no user interaction. Impact on confidentiality is high, integrity high, and availability high.
Is CVE-2026-78234 being actively exploited?: It is not currently listed in CISA's KEV catalog. Its EPSS exploit-prediction score is 0% (12th percentile), an estimate of the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How do I fix CVE-2026-78234?: Review the linked vendor and NVD advisories for patched versions and mitigations, then upgrade or apply the recommended workaround. Given its critical severity, prioritise patching exposed systems.
When was CVE-2026-78234 published?: CVE-2026-78234 was published on 2026-09-08.

References

Other CWE-295 (Improper Certificate Validation) vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-58162 — Critical (CVSS 10.0): The Apache Traffic Server certifier plugin generates certificates based on attacker-controlled client SNI. This issue…
CVE-2026-4370 — Critical (CVSS 10.0): A vulnerability was identified in Juju from version 3.2.0 until 3.6.19 and from version 4.0 until 4.0.4, where the…
CVE-2026-30836 — Critical (CVSS 10.0): Step CA is an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management for DevOps. Versions 0.30.0-rc6…
CVE-2025-68121 — Critical (CVSS 10.0): During session resumption in crypto/tls, if the underlying Config has its ClientCAs or RootCAs fields mutated between…
CVE-2022-20703 — Critical (CVSS 10.0): Multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco Small Business RV160, RV260, RV340, and RV345 Series Routers could allow an attacker…
CVE-2026-66795 — Critical (CVSS 9.9): A flaw was found in the managedcluster-import-controller. The Certificate Signing Request (CSR) auto-approval logic…

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