Resource exhaustion in Istio
CVE-2022-39278
Istio is an open platform-independent service mesh that provides traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. Prior to versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9, 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. Versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9 contain patches for this issue. There are no effective workarounds, beyond upgrading. This bug is due to an error in `regexp.Compile` in Go.
Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)
EPSS: 0.011 (62.6th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
Affected products
- Istio — versions < 1.13.9, >= 1.14.0, < 1.14.5, >= 1.15.0, < 1.15.2
Weakness classification (CWE)
Public proof-of-concept exploits
References
- security-advisories@github.com (Third Party Advisory)
- security-advisories@github.com (Third Party Advisory)
- security-advisories@github.com (Third Party Advisory)
- security-advisories@github.com (Third Party Advisory)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2022-39278?
- CVE-2022-39278 is a high-severity vulnerability in Istio, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2022-10-13.
- How severe is CVE-2022-39278?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
- Is CVE-2022-39278 known to be exploited?
- 2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.