CVE-2022-23628 MEDIUM

CVE-2022-23628: Array literal misordering in github.com/open-policy-agent/opa

Vendor Open-Policy-Agent
Product opa
Weakness CWE-682
Published February 9, 2022
Last update April 22, 2025

CVSS base score

6.3/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity Low

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

What the vulnerability does

01Description

OPA is an open source, general-purpose policy engine. Under certain conditions, pretty-printing an abstract syntax tree (AST) that contains synthetic nodes could change the logic of some statements by reordering array literals. Example of policies impacted are those that parse and compare web paths. **All of these** three conditions have to be met to create an adverse effect: 1. An AST of Rego had to be **created programmatically** such that it ends up containing terms without a location (such as wildcard variables). 2. The AST had to be **pretty-printed** using the `github.com/open-policy-agent/opa/format` package. 3. The result of the pretty-printing had to be **parsed and evaluated again** via an OPA instance using the bundles, or the Golang packages. If any of these three conditions are not met, you are not affected. Notably, all three would be true if using **optimized bundles**, i.e. bundles created with `opa build -O=1` or higher. In that case, the optimizer would fulfil condition (1.), the result of that would be pretty-printed when writing the bundle to disk, fulfilling (2.). When the bundle was then used, we'd satisfy (3.). As a workaround users may disable optimization when creating bundles.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 9, 2022 CVE published
April 22, 2025 Record updated