Flux2 is an open and extensible continuous delivery solution for Kubernetes. Flux2 versions between 0.1.0 and 0.29.0, helm-controller 0.1.0 to v0.19.0, and kustomize-controller 0.1.0 to v0.23.0 are vulnerable to Code Injection via malicious Kubeconfig. In multi-tenancy deployments this can also lead to privilege escalation if the controller's service account has elevated permissions. Workarounds include disabling functionality via Validating Admission webhooks by restricting users from setting the spec.kubeConfig field in Flux Kustomization and HelmRelease objects. Additional mitigations include applying restrictive AppArmor and SELinux profiles on the controller’s pod to limit what binaries can be executed. This vulnerability is fixed in kustomize-controller v0.23.0 and helm-controller v0.19.0, both included in flux2 v0.29.0

Flux is an open and extensible continuous delivery solution for Kubernetes. Path Traversal in the kustomize-controller via a malicious kustomization.yaml allows an attacker to expose sensitive data from the controller’s pod filesystem and possibly privilege escalation in multi-tenancy deployments. Workarounds include automated tooling in the user's CI/CD pipeline to validate kustomization.yaml files conform with specific policies. This vulnerability is fixed in kustomize-controller v0.24.0 and included in flux2 v0.29.0.

Flux is an open and extensible continuous delivery solution for Kubernetes. Path Traversal in the kustomize-controller via a malicious kustomization.yaml allows an attacker to cause a Denial of Service at the controller level. Workarounds include automated tooling in the user's CI/CD pipeline to validate kustomization.yaml files conform with specific policies. This vulnerability is fixed in kustomize-controller v0.24.0 and included in flux2 v0.29.0. Users are recommended to upgrade.

Flux is a tool for keeping Kubernetes clusters in sync with sources of configuration (like Git repositories), and automating updates to configuration when there is new code to deploy. Flux CLI allows users to deploy Flux components into a Kubernetes cluster via command-line. The vulnerability allows other applications to replace the Flux deployment information with arbitrary content which is deployed into the target Kubernetes cluster instead. The vulnerability is due to the improper handling of user-supplied input, which results in a path traversal that can be controlled by the attacker. Users sharing the same shell between other applications and the Flux CLI commands could be affected by this vulnerability. In some scenarios no errors may be presented, which may cause end users not to realize that something is amiss. A safe workaround is to execute Flux CLI in ephemeral and isolated shell environments, which can ensure no persistent values exist from previous processes. However, upgrading to the latest version of the CLI is still the recommended mitigation strategy.

Flux2 is a tool for keeping Kubernetes clusters in sync with sources of configuration, and Flux's helm-controller is a Kubernetes operator that allows one to declaratively manage Helm chart releases. Helm controller is tightly integrated with the Helm SDK. A vulnerability found in the Helm SDK that affects flux2 v0.0.17 until v0.32.0 and helm-controller v0.0.4 until v0.23.0 allows for specific data inputs to cause high memory consumption. In some platforms, this could cause the controller to panic and stop processing reconciliations. In a shared cluster multi-tenancy environment, a tenant could create a HelmRelease that makes the controller panic, denying all other tenants from their Helm releases being reconciled. Patches are available in flux2 v0.32.0 and helm-controller v0.23.0.

Flux controllers within the affected versions range are vulnerable to a denial of service attack. Users that have permissions to change Flux’s objects, either through a Flux source or directly within a cluster, can provide invalid data to fields .spec.interval or .spec.timeout (and structured variations of these fields), causing the entire object type to stop being processed.

The issue has two root causes: a) the Kubernetes type metav1.Duration not being fully compatible with the Go type time.Duration as explained on upstream report; b) lack of validation within Flux to restrict allowed values.

Workarounds

Admission controllers can be employed to restrict the values that can be used for fields .spec.interval and .spec.timeout, however upgrading to the latest versions is still the recommended mitigation.

Credits

This issue was reported by Alexander Block (@codablock) through the Flux security mailing list (as recommended).

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

- Open an issue in any of the affected repositories. - Contact us at the CNCF Flux channel.

References

- https://github.com/kubernetes/apimachinery/issues/131

kustomize-controller is a Kubernetes operator, specialized in running continuous delivery pipelines for infrastructure and workloads defined with Kubernetes manifests and assembled with Kustomize. Users that can create Kubernetes Secrets, Service Accounts and Flux Kustomization objects, could execute commands inside the kustomize-controller container by embedding a shell script in a Kubernetes Secret. This can be used to run kubectl commands under the Service Account of kustomize-controller, thus allowing an authenticated Kubernetes user to gain cluster admin privileges. In affected versions multitenant environments where non-admin users have permissions to create Flux Kustomization objects are affected by this issue. This vulnerability was fixed in kustomize-controller v0.15.0 (included in flux2 v0.18.0) released on 2021-10-08. Starting with v0.15, the kustomize-controller no longer executes shell commands on the container OS and the kubectl binary has been removed from the container image. To prevent the creation of Kubernetes Service Accounts with secrets in namespaces owned by tenants, a Kubernetes validation webhook such as Gatekeeper OPA or Kyverno can be used.