Unbounded Memory Consumption Vulnerability in Kyverno Policy Engine
CVE-2026-23881

7.7HIGH

Key Information:

Vendor

Kyverno

Status
Kyverno
Vendor
CVE Published:
27 January 2026

What is CVE-2026-23881?

The Kyverno policy engine, utilized for cloud-native platform engineering, is susceptible to a denial of service due to unbounded memory consumption. Versions prior to 1.16.3 and 1.15.3 allow users with privileges to create policies that can lead to exponential amplification of string data via context variables. This could lead to significant resource exhaustion, impacting the availability of services relying on Kyverno. It is crucial for users to upgrade to the patched versions to mitigate this risk.

Affected Version(s)

kyverno < 1.15.3 < 1.15.3

kyverno >= 1.16.0, < 1.16.3 < 1.16.0, 1.16.3

References

https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/security/advisories/GH...
x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/7a651be3a8c78dc...
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno/commit/f5617f60920568a...
x_refsource_MISC

CVSS V3.1

Score:
7.7
Severity:
HIGH
Confidentiality:
None
Integrity:
None
Availability:
None
Attack Vector:
Network
Attack Complexity:
Low
Privileges Required:
Low
User Interaction:
None
Scope:
Changed

Timeline

  • Vulnerability published

  • Vulnerability Reserved

.