Executive brief
IBM's Instana Agent Operator, used for Kubernetes cluster monitoring, suffers from an RBAC (role-based access control) namespace isolation flaw. An authenticated attacker in one Kubernetes namespace can overwrite or delete another tenant's cluster-level monitoring permissions, causing permanent loss of monitoring access for other organizations or silently taking control of their cluster-wide security policies.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a namespace isolation bypass in Instana Agent Operator affecting builds 1.0.303–1.0.323. Cluster-scoped RBAC objects (ClusterRoleBinding) are keyed solely by the custom resource (CR) name without namespace disambiguation, allowing an authenticated attacker to create a same-named InstanaAgent CR in a different namespace to overwrite or delete the shared ClusterRoleBinding. This affects cluster-level RBAC permissions and monitoring access. The attack requires valid Kubernetes authentication but no elevated privileges within the target namespace. The flaw was patched in build 1.0.324 or later.
Affected products
- IBM Observability with Instana (Agent) 1.0.303 through 1.0.323
Timeline
- 2026-09-04: disclosed