Description

A flaw was found in the must-gather component of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. Certain ACM wrapper Custom Resources that embed Secret data are collected without redaction. When an administrator runs must-gather, credentials and tokens are captured in cleartext in the resulting archive, potentially exposing sensitive information to anyone with access to the archive.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-18T16:18:17.493Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-18T16:18:17.493Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A sensitive information disclosure vulnerability exists in the must-gather component of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. The flaw arises because specific ACM wrapper Custom Resources that embed Secret data are collected by the must-gather utility without proper redaction. When an administrator executes the must-gather diagnostic tool, sensitive credentials, tokens, and secret data are captured in cleartext and stored within the resulting diagnostic archive. This creates significant risk implications, as unauthorized users or entities who gain access to the support archive can harvest these exposed credentials to compromise connected systems and cluster resources. The attacker capabilities rely on having access to the generated diagnostic archive rather than active network exploitation, meaning the risk is primarily centered around improper handling and storage of support bundles. Exploitation requires an administrator or privileged user to generate the must-gather archive, which subsequently contains the unredacted sensitive material. Affected systems include Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes utilizing the vulnerable must-gather component.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability stems from an omission in the redaction logic within the must-gather component of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. The vulnerable component fails to scrub or redact sensitive fields from certain ACM wrapper Custom Resources that encapsulate Kubernetes Secret objects during diagnostic data collection. When the must-gather diagnostic utility runs, it queries the Kubernetes API server for targeted Custom Resources, serializes the resource definitions into YAML or JSON format, and writes them directly to the output directory structure within the diagnostic archive without inspecting the embedded payloads for sensitive strings.\nThe step-by-step attack flow involves several phases. First, an administrator or automated system executes the must-gather diagnostic command against the Kubernetes cluster. Second, the must-gather utility collects cluster state information, including the vulnerable ACM wrapper Custom Resources containing embedded Secret data. Third, the utility dumps these resources in cleartext into the resulting diagnostic archive (.tar or .tar.gz format). Fourth, the archive is typically shared with support teams, stored in central logging or storage repositories, or attached to support tickets. Finally, an unauthorized entity with read access to the stored archive extracts the contents, navigates to the collected Custom Resource definitions, and retrieves plaintext credentials, authentication tokens, and API keys.\nThe root cause is insufficient input sanitization and lack of recursive redaction mechanisms for custom wrapper schemas within the diagnostic collection framework. Authentication and privilege requirements for initial generation typically require cluster-level diagnostic permissions, but post-exploitation impact relies entirely on the access controls applied to the generated archive file. The network exposure is limited to local API interactions during collection, but the resulting payload behavior presents a persistent, static risk profile via the stored artifact containing unredacted secrets."
}