Red Hat Quay: two critical token flaws — fixed releases and response steps

Red Hat Quay has a 9.8 unauthenticated signing-key takeover flaw and a 9.9 cross-tenant robot-token theft flaw. Fixed releases and practical response steps are available; no active exploitation was confirmed in the reviewed records at the reporting cutoff.

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Editorial illustration of a central container-registry vault with a glowing key and a robot-account token.
Original editorial illustration of registry signing-key and robot-token risk; not official Red Hat or Quay imagery.

Security advisory

Red Hat published two Critical Quay token flaws: CVE-2026-123710 scores 9.8 and CVE-2026-110697 scores 9.9.12

Practical guidance: preserve relevant evidence, update the exact deployed branch, keep /keys restricted, and inspect key-change and registry activity.12

Reporting cutoff: November 12, 2026, 2:53:09 p.m. EST (November 12, 2026, 19:53:09 UTC).

What each flaw allows

CVE-2026-123710 is a Critical 9.8 flaw that lets an unauthenticated client use a reachable /keys endpoint to install an approved signing key with no expiry.1

Tokens signed with that key can be accepted for any repository, enabling private-image reads and writes and replacement of repository tags.1

CVE-2026-110697 is a Critical 9.9 flaw in which a low-privileged attacker can use an underscore as a SQL LIKE wildcard to retrieve another tenant’s robot accounts and decrypted authentication tokens.2

Those stolen robot tokens can enable unauthorized image reads, pushes, or overwrites across tenant boundaries.2

The captured records identify Red Hat Quay 3 and Red Hat Quay 5 package families as affected.12

For CVE-2026-110697, Red Hat lists OpenShift Update Service as unaffected, and says Quay.io is already fixed.2

Fixed releases by branch

Match the update to the branch you actually run. The confirmed fixed-release matrix is:

Branch CVE-2026-123710 CVE-2026-110697
3.9 3.9.283 3.9.283
3.10 3.10.284 3.10.284
3.12 3.12.245 3.12.245
3.14 3.14.106 3.14.106
3.15 3.15.97 3.15.97
3.16 3.16.78 3.16.78
3.17 3.17.79 3.17.79
3.18 Not confirmed by the reviewed errata for this CVE 3.18.32

3.18 caution: the reviewed evidence confirms 3.18.3 for CVE-2026-110697, but does not confirm a 3.18 fix for CVE-2026-123710.12

Response steps for a small IT team

  1. Before remediation, preserve relevant Quay audit and registry records so later key or token changes do not erase the starting point for the investigation.12
  2. Identify the deployed Quay branch and update to the exact fixed release listed for that branch; do not use 3.18.3 as evidence of a CVE-2026-123710 fix.12
  3. At the proxy or load balancer, restrict /keys so only trusted internal components can reach it.1
  4. Review audit logs for service_key_rotate and service_key_delete events with a null expiration_date, then investigate unrecognized approved service keys.1
  5. For underscore-name exposure, rotate robot tokens for colliding namespaces and monitor pulls and pushes that do not match expected robot usage.2
  6. If an immediate update is impossible, restrict who can create organizations or namespaces containing an underscore; Red Hat says this reduces exposure but does not fix the underlying flaw.2
  7. After the update, confirm the running release and continue reviewing key-change and registry activity for signs that pre-update access may have occurred.12

What remains unknown

At this reporting cutoff, the two reviewed CVE records did not confirm active exploitation.12 That bounded finding is not proof that exploitation has never occurred.

Deleting an unrecognized key before deploying a fixed build is not durable because the anonymous request can install another key.1

Sources

  1. Red Hat CVE-2026-123710 record (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  2. Red Hat CVE-2026-110697 record (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  3. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.9.28 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  4. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.10.28 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  5. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.12.24 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  6. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.14.10 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  7. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.15.9 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  8. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.16.7 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)
  9. Red Hat Security Advisory for Quay 3.17.7 (retrieved 2026-11-12T19:53:09Z)

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