Critical etcd Vulnerability Allows Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Cluster APIs

**Executive summary:** A critical authentication-bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-33413, CVSS 8.8) was found in etcd allowing unauthenticated or under-privileged clients with network access to the client gRPC endpoint (port 2379) to trigger alarms, perform compaction, and create leases, potentially causing data loss and resource exhaustion; the issue was root-caused to missing auth-wrapper methods, validated end-to-end by an autonomous Strix AI agent, and fixed in the March 2026 security release.