Unauthenticated Domain Event Forgery in KubeVirt virt-handler
CVE-2026-13208 Published on June 24, 2026
Kubevirt: virt-handler-rhel9: kubevirt: virt-handler notify server trusts vmi identity from unauthenticated grpc request body
A flaw was found in KubeVirt's virt-handler domain notify server. The gRPC handlers for HandleDomainEvent and HandleK8SEvent derive the VMI identity (namespace/name) solely from the request body without validating it against the connection's origin. Each virt-launcher pod connects through a per-VMI pipe socket, but no identity tag is propagated from the pipe path to the server handlers. This allows a compromised virt-launcher process to send forged domain lifecycle events for any other VMI scheduled on the same node, causing virt-handler to erroneously update that VMI's state and disrupt its lifecycle management.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-13208 is exploitable with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public.
Weakness Type
What is an authentification Vulnerability?
When an actor claims to have a given identity, the software does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct.
CVE-2026-13208 has been classified to as an authentification vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-13208
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