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HIGH

Unauthenticated control plane denial of service attack in Istio

Published Feb 22, 2022

Description

Istio is an open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices. In affected versions the Istio control plane, `istiod`, is vulnerable to a request processing error, allowing a malicious attacker that sends a specially crafted message which results in the control plane crashing. This endpoint is served over TLS port 15012, but does not require any authentication from the attacker. For simple installations, Istiod is typically only reachable from within the cluster, limiting the blast radius. However, for some deployments, especially [multicluster](https://istio.io/latest/docs/setup/install/multicluster/primary-remote/) topologies, this port is exposed over the public internet. There are no effective workarounds, beyond upgrading. Limiting network access to Istiod to the minimal set of clients can help lessen the scope of the vulnerability to some extent.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

References (9)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources

CVE.org / MITRE

Status PUBLISHED
Assigner GitHub_M
Published Feb 22, 2022
Updated Apr 23, 2025
Reserved Jan 19, 2022

CISA Vulnrichment

Updated Apr 23, 2025

NVD

Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026

Red Hat

Severity Moderate
Public date Feb 22, 2022
Bugzilla 2057277

ENISA EUVD

Assigner GitHub_M
Published Feb 22, 2022
Updated Apr 23, 2025