Ironic Standalone Operator's controller modifies user-owned resources without consent
Date: 2026-05
Affected: go/github.com/metal3-io/ironic-standalone-operator, go/github.com/metal3-io/ironic-standalone-operator
Attack vector: auth-bypass
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Medium
CWE: CWE-862
CVSS: 4.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)

## Impact The Ironic Standalone Operator (IRSO) is the operator to maintain an Ironic deployment for Metal3. IRSO controller automatically adds its environment label to user-provided Secrets and ConfigMaps without the resource owner's consent. A high-privilege controller modifying user-owned resources constitutes an unauthorized integrity violation. Deployments running IrSO v0.7.0 through v0.8.1 that reference user-provided Secrets or ConfigMaps (TLS certificates, BMC CA, trusted CA) are affected. ## Patches Fixed in v0.9.0, v0.8.2, v0.7.3. ## Workarounds Manually add the environment label (ironic-standalone-operator.metal3.io/environment) to all user-provided Secrets and ConfigMaps before they are referenced in the Ironic resource. This prevents the controller from modifying them. ## Resources - https://github.com/metal3-io/ironic-standalone-operator/pull/619 - https://github.com/metal3-io/ironic-standalone-operator/pull/664 - https://github.com/metal3-io/ironic-standalone-operator/pull/665


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):