open-nomad/.changelog/16419.txt

```release-note:security
variables: Fixed a bug where a workload identity without any workload-associated policies was treated as a management token [CVE-2023-1299](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-1299)
```
acl: prevent privilege escalation via workload identity ACL policies can be associated with a job so that the job's Workload Identity can have expanded access to other policy objects, including other variables. Policies set on the variables the job automatically has access to were ignored, but this includes policies with `deny` capabilities. Additionally, when resolving claims for a workload identity without any attached policies, the `ResolveClaims` method returned a `nil` ACL object, which is treated similarly to a management token. While this was safe in Nomad 1.4.x, when the workload identity token was exposed to the task via the `identity` block, this allows a user with `submit-job` capabilities to escalate their privileges. We originally implemented automatic workload access to Variables as a separate code path in the Variables RPC endpoint so that we don't have to generate on-the-fly policies that blow up the ACL policy cache. This is fairly brittle but also the behavior around wildcard paths in policies different from the rest of our ACL polices, which is hard to reason about. Add an `ACLClaim` parameter to the `AllowVariableOperation` method so that we can push all this logic into the `acl` package and the behavior can be consistent. This will allow a `deny` policy to override automatic access (and probably speed up checks of non-automatic variable access). 2023-03-03 16:41:59 +00:00			```release-note:security
			`variables: Fixed a bug where a workload identity without any workload-associated policies was treated as a management token [CVE-2023-1299](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-1299)`
			```