CVE-2026-33343: etcd: Nested etcd transactions bypass RBAC authorization checks

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?

An authenticated user with RBAC restricted permissions on key ranges can use nested transactions to bypass all key-level authorization. This allows any authenticated user with direct access to etcd to effectively ignore all key range restrictions, accessing the entire etcd data store.

Kubernetes does not rely on etcd’s built-in authentication and authorization. Instead, the API server handles authentication and authorization itself, so typical Kubernetes deployments are not affected.