CVE-2026-44180
CriticalCVSS 9.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk37th percentile - higher than 37% of all known CVEs
Summary
Jupyter Enterprise Gateway versions 2.0.0rc1 through 3.3.0 have a vulnerability that bypasses the UID/GID restriction preventing kernel launches as root. A specially crafted KERNEL_UID or KERNEL_GID value allows running kernels as root, increasing the attack surface and potentially leading to container escapes, compromising worker nodes and the entire Kubernetes cluster.
Risk Assessment
The risk includes full compromise of the Kubernetes cluster through repeated exploitation, affecting all worker nodes and workloads. Attackers can gain code execution on the underlying host via hostPath volume mounts and crontab manipulation.
Recommendation
Upgrade Jupyter Enterprise Gateway to version 3.0.0 or later immediately. Prior to upgrade, restrict API access and monitor for suspicious KERNEL_UID and KERNEL_GID values.
Original NVD description (English source)
Jupyter Enterprise Gateway launches remote Jupyter Notebook kernels across distributed clusters like Apache Spark, Kubernetes, and Docker Swarm. Versions 2.0.0rc1 and above prior to 3.3.0 have a prohibited UID and GID feature that by default prevents launching kernels with UID or GID 0 (root), and this restriction can be bypassed using a specially crafted KERNEL_UID or KERNEL_GID value. This input validation vulnerability allows running Jupyter kernels as root, which can be dangerous as it allows more attack surface, and may lead to container escapes, compromising the worker node and all workloads running on it. Repeated exploitation can compromise all worker nodes, and thus the entire Kubernetes cluster. It is possible to specify volume mounts, so one vector for a container escape is to use a hostPath R/W volume mount, use this UID/GID bypass to run as root, and then gain code execution in the underlying worker node by creating a crontab entry in the mounted host file system. This issue has been fixed in version 3.0.0.