CVE-2023-41333 MEDIUM

CVE-2023-41333: Bypass of namespace restrictions in CiliumNetworkPolicy

Vendor Cilium
Product cilium
Weakness CWE-306 · Missing auth
Published September 26, 2023
Last update September 23, 2024

CVSS base score

6.9/10
Attack vector Adjacent
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required High
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity None

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF-based dataplane. An attacker with the ability to create or modify CiliumNetworkPolicy objects in a particular namespace is able to affect traffic on an entire Cilium cluster, potentially bypassing policy enforcement in other namespaces. By using a crafted `endpointSelector` that uses the `DoesNotExist` operator on the `reserved:init` label, the attacker can create policies that bypass namespace restrictions and affect the entire Cilium cluster. This includes potentially allowing or denying all traffic. This attack requires API server access, as described in the Kubernetes API Server Attacker section of the Cilium Threat Model. This issue has been resolved in Cilium versions 1.14.2, 1.13.7, and 1.12.14. As a workaround an admission webhook can be used to prevent the use of `endpointSelectors` that use the `DoesNotExist` operator on the `reserved:init` label in CiliumNetworkPolicies.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

September 26, 2023 CVE published
September 23, 2024 Record updated