Cloud-admin escalation via policy target injection
Published May 28, 2026 · Updated May 28, 2026
Authorization bypass in affected OpenStack Keystone releases allows remote authenticated users to escalate to cloud admin. The enforce_call policy enforcer merges raw JSON body keys into a dictionary already populated from database lookups, letting untrusted keys overwrite trusted targets. Any authenticated account can reach policy-protected endpoints and read credential secrets, create credentials for other users, or gain cloud-admin authority.
Summary
What happened
Authorization bypass in affected OpenStack Keystone releases allows remote authenticated users to escalate to cloud admin. The enforce_call policy enforcer merges raw JSON body keys into a dictionary already populated from database lookups, letting untrusted keys overwrite trusted targets. Any authenticated account can reach policy-protected endpoints and read credential secrets, create credentials for other users, or gain cloud-admin authority.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-42999
- Published
- May 28, 2026
- Updated
- May 28, 2026
- Vendor
- OpenStack
- Product
- Keystone
- Classifications
- CWE-863, CWE-639, T1068
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 28, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 28, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=14.0.0 <27.0.2
- Affected versionversion=28.0.0 <28.0.2
- Affected versionversion=29.0.0 <29.0.2
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Launchpad issue 2148398 proof of conceptproof of concept · unverified
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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