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Insufficiently Protected CredentialsWeakness · CWE-522

CVE-2026-44938

HIGH · 8.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-07-07
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
94/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable Zero-click 7 weeks old

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A vulnerability has been identified in Fleet's agent-side deployer, which did not filter security-sensitive keys from namespaceLabels in fleet.yaml (or BundleDeployment.spec.options.namespaceLabels) when applying them to the target namespace. An attacker with git push access to a Fleet-monitored repository could overwrite Pod Security Standards (PSS) enforcement labels on a target namespace. This allows the attacker to weaken admission controls and deploy workloads that PSS policies would otherwise block.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

Fleet's agent-side deployer does not filter security-sensitive keys from namespaceLabels in fleet.yaml (or BundleDeployment.spec.options.namespaceLabels) when applying them to target namespaces. An attacker with git push access to a Fleet-monitored repository can overwrite Pod Security Standards (PSS) enforcement labels (e.g., pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce) on target namespaces, weakening admission controls and bypassing PSS policies.

MitigationImplement filtering to exclude security-sensitive namespace labels (particularly PSS-related labels with the pod-security.kubernetes.io/* prefix) from being applied to target namespaces. Alternatively, use a denylist approach for known sensitive labels or an allowlist approach for approved labels.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Identify Fleet deployment and version
    Run 'fleetctl version' or check the Fleet controller deployment in your Kubernetes cluster (e.g., kubectl get deployment -n fleet-system) to determine if Fleet is installed and its version
    Affected if Fleet is installed and version is within the affected range (if known)
  2. Locate fleet.yaml files with namespaceLabels
    Search your Git repositories monitored by Fleet for fleet.yaml files containing 'namespaceLabels:' or 'namespace_labels:' key. Use 'grep -r "namespaceLabels"' across your Fleet-managed git repos
    Affected if fleet.yaml files contain namespaceLabels configuration pointing to target namespaces
  3. Inspect BundleDeployment resources
    Run 'kubectl get bundledeployments -A -o json' and examine spec.options.namespaceLabels for any label definitions. Also check 'kubectl get bundles -A' for related bundle specs
    Affected if BundleDeployment or Bundle resources contain namespaceLabels with any value
  4. Check for PSS-related label prefixes
    Review all namespaceLabels configurations found in steps 2-3. Look for any labels starting with 'pod-security.kubernetes.io/' prefix (e.g., enforce, audit, warn)
    Affected if namespaceLabels contain keys with the 'pod-security.kubernetes.io/*' prefix
  5. Verify labels applied to target namespaces
    For each target namespace referenced in your Fleet configurations, run 'kubectl get namespace <name> -o jsonpath={.metadata.labels}' to list applied labels. Check if any PSS labels exist
    Affected if Target namespaces have PSS enforcement labels (pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce) that could have been set by Fleet

A user is affected if Fleet is deployed and either fleet.yaml files, BundleDeployment resources, or target namespaces contain namespaceLabels with the pod-security.kubernetes.io/* prefix that could override PSS enforcement.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Implement filtering to exclude security-sensitive namespace labels (particularly PSS-related labels with the pod-security.kubernetes.io/* prefix) from being applied to target namespaces. Alternatively, use a denylist approach for known sensitive labels or an allowlist approach for approved labels.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation8.0 h
  • Testing4.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
18.0 hours of engineering $3,200
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-44938 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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