In short
- CVE-2026-55226 is a MEDIUM (CVSS 5.4) vulnerability affecting io.strimzi:strimzi.
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS): 0.25%, higher than 16.4% of all vulnerabilities.
- Fix: update to 1.0.1 or later.
Description
Impact
When only the Topic or only the User operators are deployed as part of the Entity Operator in the Kafka custom resource, the RBAC rights are not following the principle of least-privilege and the Entity Operator ServiceAccount still has access rights corresponding to both operators. That might allow the ServiceAccount to access KafkaUser custom resources and Secrets when the User operator is not deployed and access KafkaTopic custom resources when the Topic operator is not deployed.
Patches
The issue is fixed in Strimzi 1.0.1 and 1.1.0.
Workarounds
There is no workaround for this issue.
NVD description
Strimzi provides a way to run an Apache Kafka cluster on Kubernetes or OpenShift in various deployment configurations. In Strimzi 1.0.0 and earlier, deploying only the Topic Operator or only the User Operator through the Kafka custom resource leaves the Entity Operator ServiceAccount with RBAC permissions for both components. The excess permissions can allow access to KafkaUser custom resources and Secrets when the User Operator is absent, or access to KafkaTopic custom resources when the Topic Operator is absent. This issue is fixed in versions 1.0.1 and 1.1.0.
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