CVE-2025-24376

Workarounds

On clusters running Kubewarden < 1.21.0, the following Kubewarden policy can be applied to prevent the creation of AdmissionPolicy and AdmissionPolicyGroup resources that interact with PolicyReport resources:

apiVersion: policies.kubewarden.io/v1
kind: ClusterAdmissionPolicy
metadata:
  name: "deny-interaction-with-policyreport"
spec:
  module: registry://ghcr.io/kubewarden/policies/cel-policy:latest
  settings:
    variables:
      - name: hasWildcardInsideOfApiGroup
        expression: "object.spec.rules.exists(r, r.apiGroups.exists(ag, ag == '*'))"
      - name: hasWildcardInsideOfResources
        expression: "object.spec.rules.exists(r, r.resources.exists(ag, ag == '*' || ag == '*/*' || ag == 'policyreports/*'))"
      - name: dealsWithPolicyReportApiGroup
        expression: "object.spec.rules.exists(r, r.apiGroups.exists(ag, ag == 'wgpolicyk8s.io'))"
      - name: dealsWithPolicyReportResource
        expression: "object.spec.rules.exists(r, r.resources.exists(ag, ag == 'policyreports' || ag == 'policyreports/'))"
      - name: isPendingDeletion
        expression: "has(object.metadata.deletionTimestamp)"
    validations:
      - expression: |
          !( variables.hasWildcardInsideOfApiGroup ||
             variables.hasWildcardInsideOfResources ||
             variables.dealsWithPolicyReportResource ||
             variables.dealsWithPolicyReportApiGroup
          ) || variables.isPendingDeletion
        message: "cannot target PolicyReport resources or use wildcards in apiGroups or resources"
  rules:
    - apiGroups: ["policies.kubewarden.io"]
      apiVersions: ["v1"]
      operations: ["CREATE", "UPDATE"]
      resources: ["admissionpolicies", "admissionpolicygroups"]
  mutating: false
  backgroundAudit: true

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory you can contact the Kubewarden team using the procedures described under the “security disclosure“ guidelines of the Kubewarden project.

By design, AdmissionPolicy and AdmissionPolicyGroup can evaluate only namespaced resources. The resources to be evaluated are determined by the rules provided by the user when defining the policy.
There might be Kubernetes namespaced resources that should not be validated by AdmissionPolicy and by the AdmissionPolicyGroup policies because of their sensitive nature.
For example, PolicyReport are namespaced resources that contain the list of non compliant objects found inside of a namespace. See this section of Kubewarden’s documentation for more details about PolicyReport resources.
An attacker can use either an AdmissionPolicy or an AdmissionPolicyGroup to prevent the creation and update of PolicyReport objects to hide non-compliant resources.
Moreover, the same attacker might use a mutating AdmissionPolicy to alter the contents of the PolicyReport created inside of the namespace.

CVE-2025-24376 has a CVSS score of 6.5 (Medium). The vector is network-reachable, no privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (1.21.0); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

Kodem intelligence

Starting from the 1.21.0 release, the validation rules applied to AdmissionPolicy and AdmissionPolicyGroup have been tightened to prevent them from validating sensitive types of namespaced resources.
The new validation will also restrict the usage of wildcards when defining apiGroups and resources rules for AdmissionPolicy and AdmissionPolicyGroup objects.

1. What is CVE-2025-24376? CVE-2025-24376 is a medium-severity security vulnerability in github.com/kubewarden/kubewarden-controller (go), affecting versions >= 1.7.0, < 1.21.0. It is fixed in 1.21.0.
2. How severe is CVE-2025-24376? CVE-2025-24376 has a CVSS score of 6.5 (Medium). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
3. Which versions of github.com/kubewarden/kubewarden-controller are affected by CVE-2025-24376? github.com/kubewarden/kubewarden-controller (go) versions >= 1.7.0, < 1.21.0 is affected.
4. Is there a fix for CVE-2025-24376? Yes. CVE-2025-24376 is fixed in 1.21.0. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is CVE-2025-24376 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2025-24376 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
6. What actually determines whether CVE-2025-24376 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
7. How do I fix CVE-2025-24376? Upgrade github.com/kubewarden/kubewarden-controller to 1.21.0 or later.