Auth bypass in Kong Inc. Mesh

CVE-2026-18674

On a Kong Mesh global control plane, resources received over the zone-to-global KDS sync are attributed using the in-band, sender-controlled ControlPlane.Identifier rather than the authenticated zone identity derived from the connection. Authenticated zones can have the global control plane store and re-distribute those resources as belonging to another zone. The result is a cross-zone isolation bypass: the holder of a single enrolled zone's credential can inject, attribute, and overwrite resources in another zone's namespace mesh-wide. The root cause lives in Kuma's open-source KDS sync code, which Kong Mesh's control plane is built on.

Published · last modified .

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.006 (44.4th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 44th percentile — 44.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-18674: held from 0.002 to 0.006.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.006 · change: +0.003

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References