Vulnerability Database

362,176

Total vulnerabilities in the database

Network Policies & (Clusterwide) Cilium Network Policies with namespace label selectors may unexpectedly select pods with maliciously crafted labels — github.com/cilium/cilium

Impact

If a user has Network Policies with namespace selectors selecting labels of namespaces, or (clusterwide) Cilium Network Policies matching on namespace labels, then it is possible for an attacker with Kubernetes pod deploy rights (either directly or indirectly via higher-level APIs such as Deployment, Daemonset etc) to craft additional pod labels such that the pod is selected by another policy that exists rather than the expected policy.

Patches

The problem has been fixed and is available on versions >=1.10.14, >=1.11.8, >=1.12.1

Workarounds

There are no workarounds available.

Acknowledgements

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Isovalent to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to Sander Mathijssen for not only highlighting the issue but also proposing a resolution.

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: [email protected] - 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.

  • Published: Aug 30, 2022
  • Updated: Apr 14, 2023
  • GHSA: GHSA-pfhr-pccp-hwmh
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Low
  • Score: 4.3
  • AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

No CWE or OWASP classifications available.

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

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Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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