Critical Red Hat Quay flaws expose private container images
Original title: Critical Red Hat Quay Flaw Lets Attackers Read and Overwrite All Private Container Images in a Registry
CVE-2026-123710 and CVE-2026-110697 let attackers read or overwrite images; anonymous access can be enough.
Red Hat disclosed two critical Quay flaws found by Dave O'Connor. CVE-2026-123710, scored 9.8, lets an attacker add a trusted signing key so Quay accepts tokens for any repository, including when anonymous access is on. CVE-2026-110697, scored 9.9, lets a user who can create a namespace steal other tenants’ robot tokens through an unescaped SQL LIKE pattern. Every Quay 3 and Quay 5 version is affected. Red Hat says fixed builds exist for eight Quay 3 branches and that Quay.io is already fixed for the second flaw, while urging proxy blocks and key cleanup until the update runs.
Unconfirmed: The CVE page still showed no fix for CVE-2026-123710, and the eight advisories do not list CVE-2026-110697.
- A planted key has no expiry and survives restarts and password resets.
- Anonymous tokens from /v2/auth can satisfy the key-server checks.
- An underscore in a namespace can match another tenant and return robot tokens.
- Stolen robot credentials can inject images into OpenShift CI/CD, Red Hat says.
- Deleting the attacker namespace can also delete the victim robot accounts.
Impact: Read and overwrite private images and embedded secrets
| Product | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Quay | every version of Quay 3 and Quay 5 | fixed builds for eight Quay 3 branches |
- 1.Block the /keys endpoint except for trusted internal components.
- 2.Install the fixed release and remove unrecognized service keys.
- 3.Limit underscore namespaces and rotate matching robot tokens.
- Vendors
- Red Hat
Vulnerabilities mentioned
All| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Signals | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-110697 | SQL wildcard injection in Quay robot account listing | 9.9 | — | ||
| CVE-2026-123710 | Unauthenticated signing-key install in Red Hat Quay | 9.8 | — |
From the original article
3 min read at thehackernews.com
A critical flaw in Red Hat Quay allows an attacker who can access a Quay registry to read and overwrite private container images in every repository. Quay enables anonymous access by default, and while it is enabled, the attacker needs no account. When it is off, anyone with a valid account can still exploit the flaw, Red Hat said yesterday.
thehackernews.com
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