Medium (6.5) in nirmata kyverno. EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Fixed in github.com/kyverno/kyverno 1.10.0.
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. In versions of Kyverno prior to 1.10.0, resources which have the `deletionTimestamp` field defined can bypass validate, generate, or mutate-existing policies, even in cases where the `validationFailureAction` field is set to `Enforce`. This situation occurs as resources pending deletion were being consciously exempted by Kyverno, as a way to reduce processing load as policies are typically not applied to objects which are being deleted. However, this could potentially result in allowing a malicious user to leverage the Kubernetes finalizers feature by setting a finalizer which causes the Kubernetes API server to set the `deletionTimestamp` and then not completing the delete operation as a way to explicitly to bypass a Kyverno policy. Note that this is not applicable to Kubernetes Pods but, as an example, a Kubernetes Service resource can be manipulated using an indefinite finalizer to bypass policies. This is resolved in Kyverno 1.10.0. There is no known workaround.
Severity
CVSS 3.1
6.5 medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
EPSS
0.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 42% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-31)