Argo Workflows Chart is used to set up argo and its needed dependencies through one command. Prior to 0.44.0, the workflow-role has excessive privileges, the worst being create pods/exec, which will allow kubectl exec into any Pod in the same namespace, i.e. arbitrary code execution within those Pods. If a user can be made to run a malicious template, their whole namespace can be compromised. This affects versions of the argo-workflows Chart that use appVersion: 3.4 and above, which no longer need these permissions for the only available Executor, Emissary. It could also affect users below 3.4 depending on their choice of Executor in those versions. This only affects the Helm Chart and not the upstream manifests. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.44.0.
The product performs an operation at a privilege level that is higher than the minimum level required, which creates new weaknesses or amplifies the consequences of other weaknesses.
New weaknesses can be exposed because running with extra privileges, such as root or Administrator, can disable the normal security checks being performed by the operating system or surrounding environment. Other pre-existing weaknesses can turn into security vulnerabilities if they occur while operating at raised privileges. Privilege management functions can behave in some less-than-obvious ways, and they have different quirks on different platforms. These inconsistencies are particularly pronounced if you are transitioning from one non-root user to another. Signal handlers and spawned processes run at the privilege of the owning process, so if a process is running as root when a signal fires or a sub-process is executed, the signal handler or sub-process will operate with root privileges.