OpenShift GitOps Escalation via ArgoCD CR Manipulation
CVE-2025-13888 Published on December 15, 2025
Openshift-gitops-operator: openshift gitops: namespace admin cluster takeover via privileged jobs
A flaw was found in OpenShift GitOps. Namespace admins can create ArgoCD Custom Resources (CRs) that trick the system into granting them elevated permissions in other namespaces, including privileged namespaces. An authenticated attacker can then use these elevated permissions to create privileged workloads that run on master nodes, effectively giving them root access to the entire cluster.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2025-13888 is exploitable with network access, and requires user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be critical as this vulnerability has a high impact to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of this component.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 13 days later.
Weakness Type
Incorrect Privilege Assignment
A product incorrectly assigns a privilege to a particular actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.
Products Associated with CVE-2025-13888
You can be notified by email with stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-13888 are published in Red Hat Openshift Gitops:
Affected Versions
redhat-developer gitops-operator:- Before 1.16.2 is affected.
- Version sha256:c41c99f360a2515bce55c42e309e2c72500ba66d3a2c461412dee7de5ea9a9fa and below * is unaffected.
- Version sha256:27e7a59bb5c5f60be7509e5f4f07f4181d62e6583a943c46f56f568bfc30c2c1 and below * is unaffected.
- Version sha256:3eb6308c58365182b4b5b5aabf35754d821e25b8a04b0595900fb47d52cd3ecc and below * is unaffected.
- Version sha256:43ba408b8ed58259bf338fd29260d936fbde9846f772d0580b3e7486ef8ea300 and below * is unaffected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.