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.

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Fixes

Solution

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Workaround

Organizations can reduce exposure by: (1) restricting pods/exec permission on virt-launcher pods via admission policies (e.g., Gatekeeper or Kyverno rules denying exec on pods with the kubevirt.io launcher label), (2) using node affinity or dedicated node pools to isolate high-security tenant workloads from untrusted tenants, and (3) monitoring for unexpected VMI state transitions via cluster alerting.

History

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description 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.
Title Kubevirt: virt-handler-rhel9: kubevirt: virt-handler notify server trusts vmi identity from unauthenticated grpc request body
First Time appeared Redhat
Redhat container Native Virtualization
Weaknesses CWE-287
CPEs cpe:/a:redhat:container_native_virtualization:4
Vendors & Products Redhat
Redhat container Native Virtualization
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H'}


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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2026-06-24T20:39:00.675Z

Reserved: 2026-06-24T14:53:27.480Z

Link: CVE-2026-13208

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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Weaknesses