Strimzi: Cross-namespace privilege escalation via `Kafka.spec.entityOperator`
Date: 2026-06
Affected: maven/io.strimzi:strimzi
Attack vector: auth-bypass
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: High
CVE: CVE-2026-55225
CWE: CWE-269
CWE-441
CVSS: 8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H)

### Impact Having the Topic and User operators to watch different namespaces than the one where the Kafka cluster is deployed, is a fully documented feature. When the `watchedNamespace` field is used within the Topic or User operator (as part of the `Kafka.spec.entityOperator` field), the Cluster Operator creates a Role granting full CRUD on Secrets into the specified namespace. It also creates a RoleBinding to bind such Role to the entity operator ServiceAccount within the namespace where the Kafka cluster runs. An attacker can craft a Kafka custom resource (in an attacker's namespace) with the `watchedNamespace` field set to a target namespace and then they can mint a token for the ServiceAccount (in the attacker's namespace) to read/write Secrets in that target. This is valid with any target namespace for which the Cluster Operator has the rights (regardless the value of the `STRIMZI_NAMESPACE` environment variable). The at-risk target namespaces are the namespaces which the user has given permissions to the Cluster Operator for, by creating related RoleBinding(s). ### Patches The issue is fixed in Strimzi 1.0.1 and 1.1.0 by adding a control to enable the watched namespace feature through a dedicated environment variable within the Cluster Operator deployment. The watched namespaces feature is disabled by default. ### Workarounds A possible workaround for this issue is about using a policy agent like Kyverno or OPA to prevent the usage of the `watchedNamespace` at


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):