CVE-2026-78234
CRITICALDescription
A flaw was found in hawtio-operator. The operator reads the OpenShift Service CA private signing key from the openshift-service-ca namespace and uses it to mint client certificates with a Subject Common Name (CN) supplied by the author of a namespaced Hawtio custom resource. Because the operator ships a ClusterRole that aggregates Hawtio CR permissions into the edit and admin roles, any user with edit access in any namespace can obtain a Service-CA-signed certificate with an arbitrary subject. This certificate can be used to impersonate any in-cluster service identity to peers that trust the Service CA for client authentication, including Jolokia agents and other Service-CA-trusting components.
How to fix
TridentStack Control can deploy fixes like this automatically across your Windows, macOS, and Linux fleet. See how it works
Remediation is compiled from vendor and distribution security advisories. Always confirm against the linked source for your exact version and platform.
CVSS v3 Vector
Exploitability
Impact
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Exploit Intelligence
Low risk: more likely to be exploited than 12% of all known CVEs.
References
Related Vulnerabilities
Other CWE-295 (Improper Certificate Validation) vulnerabilities, ordered by exploit likelihood. View all
| CVE | Severity | CVSS | EPSS | Exploited | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2015-4000 | Low | 3.7 | 100% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2020-0601 | High | 8.1 | 89% | KEV | Fix |
| CVE-2009-3555 | Critical | 9.8 | 87% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2022-26923 | High | 8.8 | 84% | KEV | Fix |
| CVE-2023-27823 | Critical | 9.8 | 54% | - | - |
| CVE-2022-42979 | High | 8.8 | 24% | - | - |
Common questions
How do I fix CVE-2026-78234?
Published advisories record a fix for 2 affected products. The "How to fix" section on this page lists the fixed version and source advisory for each one, so apply the entry matching what you actually run.
Is CVE-2026-78234 being actively exploited?
Not that we know of. CVE-2026-78234 is not in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Its EPSS score of 0.21% is the estimated probability that it will be exploited in the next 30 days. That is higher than 12% of all scored CVEs.
How severe is CVE-2026-78234?
CVE-2026-78234 has a CVSS v3 base score of 9.9, rated critical. CVSS rates the technical impact if the vulnerability is exploited, not how likely that is, so weigh it alongside the exploit-prediction score when you decide what to patch first.
What does CVE-2026-78234 affect?
Published advisories record a fix for rhbac-4/hawtio (Red Hat / RHEL), rhbac-4/hawtio (Rocky). Only products with a sourced advisory are listed, so treat this as what we can cite rather than a complete inventory.
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Markdown
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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2026-09-08.