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Unauthenticated control plane denial of service attack due to stack exhaustion

High
howardjohn published GHSA-8w5h-qr4r-2h6g Mar 10, 2022

Package

docker Istio (Docker)

Affected versions

<1.13.2

Patched versions

1.11.8,1.12.5.1.13.2

Description

Impact

The Istio control plane, istiod, is vulnerable to a request processing error, allowing a malicious attacker that sends a specially crafted or oversized message which results in the control plane crashing when the Kubernetes validating or mutating webhook service is exposed publicly. This endpoint is served over TLS port 15017, but does not require any authentication from the attacker.

For simple installations, Istiod is typically only reachable from within the cluster, limiting the blast radius. However, for some deployments, especially external istiod topologies, this port is exposed over the public internet.

Patches

  • Istio 1.13.2 and above
  • Istio 1.12.5 and above
  • Istio 1.11.8 and above

Workarounds

Disable access to a validating webhook that is exposed to the public internet or restrict the set of IP addresses that can query it to a set of known, trusted entities.

References

golang/go#51112

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please email us at istio-security-vulnerability-reports@googlegroups.com

Severity

High
7.5
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2022-24726

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits