CVE-2023-30851: Potential HTTP policy bypass when using header rules in Cilium

Published May 22, 2023
·
Updated

Impact

This issue only impacts users who:

- Have a HTTP policy that applies to multiple toEndpoints AND - Have an allow-all rule in place that affects only one of those endpoints

In such cases, a wildcard rule will be appended to the set of HTTP rules, which could cause bypass of HTTP policies.

Patches

This issue has been patched in Cilium 1.11.16, 1.12.9, and 1.13.2.

Workarounds

Rewrite HTTP rules for each endpoint separately. For example, if the initial rule looks like:

egress: - toEndpoints: - matchLabels: k8s:kind: echo - matchLabels: k8s:kind: example toPorts: - ports: - port: "8080" protocol: TCP rules: http: - method: "GET"

It should be rewritten to: egress: - toEndpoints: - matchLabels: k8s:kind: echo toPorts: - ports: - port: "8080" protocol: TCP rules: http: - method: "GET" - toEndpoints: - matchLabels: k8s:kind: example toPorts: - ports: - port: "8080" protocol: TCP rules: http: - method: "GET"

Acknowledgements

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Isovalent to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @jrajahalme for investigating and fixing the issue.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please reach out on Slack.

As usual, if you think you found a related vulnerability, we strongly encourage you to report security vulnerabilities to our private security mailing list: security@cilium.io - first, before disclosing them in any public forums. This is a private mailing list where only members of the Cilium internal security team are subscribed to, and is treated as top priority.

Other sources

Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF-based dataplane. This issue only impacts users who have a HTTP policy that applies to multiple toEndpoints AND have an allow-all rule in place that affects only one of those endpoints. In such cases, a wildcard rule will be appended to the set of HTTP rules, which could cause bypass of HTTP policies. This issue has been patched in Cilium 1.11.16, 1.12.9, and 1.13.2.

— MITRE

Affected Software

6 affected componentsFixes available
go/github.com/cilium/cilium>=1.13.0<1.13.2
1.13.2
go/github.com/cilium/cilium>=1.12.0<1.12.9
1.12.9
go/github.com/cilium/cilium<1.11.16
1.11.16
Cilium Cilium<1.11.16
Cilium Cilium>=1.12.0<1.12.9
Cilium Cilium>=1.13.0<1.13.2

Event History

May 22, 2023
Advisory Published
08:33 PM
May 25, 2023
CVE Published
via MITRE·05:47 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·05:47 PM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the vulnerability ID of this issue?

The vulnerability ID is CVE-2023-30851.

2

What is the impact of this vulnerability?

This vulnerability could cause bypass of HTTP policies in certain scenarios.

3

What software is affected by this vulnerability?

Cilium versions 1.11.0 up to 1.11.16, versions 1.12.0 up to 1.12.9, and versions 1.13.0 up to 1.13.2 are affected.

4

How can I fix this vulnerability?

Update Cilium to version 1.13.2, 1.12.9, or 1.11.16 to fix this vulnerability.

5

What is the severity of this vulnerability?

The severity of this vulnerability is medium with a CVSS score of 5.3.

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