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Potential HTTP policy bypass when using header rules in Cilium

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 20, 2023 in cilium/cilium • Updated Nov 7, 2023

Package

gomod github.com/cilium/cilium (Go)

Affected versions

< 1.11.16
>= 1.12.0, < 1.12.9
>= 1.13.0, < 1.13.2

Patched versions

1.11.16
1.12.9
1.13.2

Description

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.

References

@ferozsalam ferozsalam published to cilium/cilium May 20, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 22, 2023
Reviewed May 22, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database May 25, 2023
Last updated Nov 7, 2023

Severity

Moderate
5.3
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-30851

GHSA ID

GHSA-2h44-x2wx-49f4

Source code

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