Description
A flaw was found in the Application Subscription controller (multicluster-operators-subscription) of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM). A user with namespace-scoped "edit" privileges in an ACM hub namespace can create a Channel resource pointing to a Helm repository they control and a Subscription resource referencing it. The app-subscription controller fetches and applies the Helm chart contents with its own elevated authority, without verifying whether the subscription creator holds the "open-cluster-management:subscription-admin" role and without restricting applied resources to the subscription namespace. This allows the attacker to include cluster-scoped resources in the Helm chart, such as a ClusterRoleBinding granting the attacker's ServiceAccount the "cluster-admin" ClusterRole. Successful exploitation results in full cluster-admin privilege escalation. This contradicts the ACM documentation which states that non-subscription-admin users should have resources deployed into the subscription namespace only.
Published: 2026-08-05
Score: 9 Critical
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

Vendor Workaround

Remove the RBAC aggregation (immediate, targeted) Delete the ClusterRole that aggregates Application Subscription management permissions into the Kubernetes edit role: oc delete clusterrole open-cluster-management:multicloud-operators-subscription:rbac-aggregate-edit Verification: oc auth can-i create subscriptions.apps.open-cluster-management.io --as=<user> -n <namespace> Expected result after mitigation: no Important notes: This ClusterRole is recreated by the multiclusterhub-operator during reconciliation. Customers must re-apply this mitigation after any ACM operator upgrade, operator pod restart, or MultiClusterHub CR modification until a fixed release is installed. After deletion, users with only the edit or view roles will no longer be able to create or delete Application Subscription, Channel, or related resources. Users who are bound to open-cluster-management:subscription-admin or who have explicit RBAC grants are unaffected. Existing Application Subscriptions continue to function normally.

Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 9.1, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H'}

cvssV3_1

{'score': 9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:L'}


Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 9.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H'}

cvssV3_1

{'score': 9.1, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Redhat advanced Cluster Management For Kubernetes
Vendors & Products Redhat advanced Cluster Management For Kubernetes

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'total'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

threat_severity

Important


Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A flaw was found in the Application Subscription controller (multicluster-operators-subscription) of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM). A user with namespace-scoped "edit" privileges in an ACM hub namespace can create a Channel resource pointing to a Helm repository they control and a Subscription resource referencing it. The app-subscription controller fetches and applies the Helm chart contents with its own elevated authority, without verifying whether the subscription creator holds the "open-cluster-management:subscription-admin" role and without restricting applied resources to the subscription namespace. This allows the attacker to include cluster-scoped resources in the Helm chart, such as a ClusterRoleBinding granting the attacker's ServiceAccount the "cluster-admin" ClusterRole. Successful exploitation results in full cluster-admin privilege escalation. This contradicts the ACM documentation which states that non-subscription-admin users should have resources deployed into the subscription namespace only.
Title Multicluster-operators-subscription: multicluster-operators-subscription: namespace edit user can deploy cluster-scoped clusterrolebinding and become cluster-admin via application subscription
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat acm
Weaknesses CWE-267
CPEs cpe:/a:redhat:acm:2
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat acm
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 9.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


Subscriptions

Redhat Acm Advanced Cluster Management For Kubernetes
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-12T21:45:13.883Z

Reserved: 2026-05-29T13:35:58.652Z

Link: CVE-2026-10090

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-08-05T13:49:48.556Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2026-08-05T09:18:14.667

Modified: 2026-08-12T22:17:13.773

Link: CVE-2026-10090

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Important

Publid Date: 2026-08-05T08:35:00Z

Links: CVE-2026-10090 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-08-13T11:00:12Z

Weaknesses