OSSA-2026-026: Insufficient Access Controls in Ironic regarding Parent/Child Nodes

Date:

July 08, 2026

CVE:

CVE-2026-44918

Affects

• Ironic: >=27.0.0 <29.0.6, >=30.0.0 <32.0.2, >=33.0.0 <35.0.2, >=36.0.0 <37.0.1

Description

Dmitry Tantsur (Red Hat) and Tuomo Tanskanen (Ericsson Software Technology) from the Metal3.io Security Team reported a vulnerability in Ironic’s access control code.

This OSSA represents multiple related vulnerabilities in Ironic RBAC. An authenticated project manager can change the node associated with Volume Connectors or Volume Target objects, potentially changing the project permitted to access the object. Volume Connectors contain secrets in environments configuring boot from volume with iSCSI volumes. This is tracked as bug #2150256.

Objects reparented in this manner cannot be detected via inspection of the data. Operators who are concerned they may have had this occur are encouraged to perform a basic audit of node configuration, for instance, insuring the expected number of volume targets, and volume connectors are present.

Additionally, a project manager with the ability to create nodes can use the UUID of a node not owned by their project as a parent node when creating a new node. This mismatched child node can then be used to impact operations on the parent, such as forcing it to power on. This is tracked as bug #2150450.

Ironic now specifically checks, and requires node parents and children to have matching node.owner values. This patch contains an enhancement to Ironic’s upgrade check to detect this mismatched state. Operators can use the provided ironic-status upgrade check to identify misconfigured nodes.

Patches

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996479 (2024.1/caracal (unmaintained))

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996478 (2025.1/epoxy)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996476 (2025.2/flamingo)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996469 (2026.1/gazpacho)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996462 (2026.2/hibiscus)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996474 (Bugfix/33.0)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996471 (Bugfix/34.0)

• https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/ironic/+/996464 (Bugfix/37.0)

Credits

• Dmitry Tantsur from Red Hat

• Tuomo Tanskanen from Ericsson Software Technology

References

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/2150256

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ironic/+bug/2150450

• http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2026-44918

Notes

• Volume Targets and Volume Connectors only contain sensitive information in environments utilizing boot-from-volume with iSCSI volumes.

• These patches also contain hardening logic to prevent this class of vulnerability in Port and Portgroup objects. This is a defense in depth measure to provide consistent errors at the API level for invalid data.

• Branch 2024.1/caracal is unmaintained and patches are provided as a courtesy.

• Bugfix branches will recieve patches in git but will not recieve a updated release.