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Kubernetes maintainers disclosed five critical vulnerabilities in ingress-nginx, including CVE-2025-1974 with a CVSS 9.8 rating, warning that attackers on the Pod network could abuse configuration injection in the Validating Admission Controller to take over clusters without credentials. The flaws also affect how ingress-nginx builds NGINX configuration from crafted Ingress objects, potentially exposing Secrets available to the controller and leading to full cluster compromise. Patched releases ingress-nginx v1.12.1 and v1.11.5 were issued, and operators were urged to upgrade immediately or temporarily disable the Validating Admission Controller until patching is complete.
The disclosure adds to broader concerns about Kubernetes networking and multi-tenant isolation, highlighted by CVE-2021-25740, an unpatchable issue that lets users with permission to modify Endpoint or EndpointSlice objects redirect service traffic to unauthorized IP addresses. In shared ingress-controller or load-balancer deployments, that behavior can allow one tenant to steer traffic into another tenant’s workloads and bypass intended network boundaries. Security researchers and vendors said the combined risk is highest in clusters that rely on shared ingress infrastructure with broad Secret access, and recommended tightening EndpointSlice permissions, avoiding shared ingress designs in sensitive environments, and evaluating the Gateway API as a safer architecture.
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5 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
Datadog Security Labs published an analysis explaining how CVE-2021-25740 can let users with Endpoint or EndpointSlice modification rights redirect service traffic to unauthorized IPs, particularly in shared multi-tenant ingress or load balancer setups. The article recommended architectural mitigations such as avoiding shared ingress in sensitive environments and restricting tenant EndpointSlice permissions.
A GitHub repository published proof-of-concept exploit code for multiple IngressNightmare flaws, including CVE-2025-1974, CVE-2025-1097, CVE-2025-1098, and CVE-2025-24514. The release made public exploitation details available shortly after Kubernetes disclosed the vulnerabilities and fixes.
Alongside the disclosure, Kubernetes announced patched ingress-nginx versions 1.12.1 and 1.11.5 to remediate the newly disclosed vulnerabilities. As a temporary mitigation, users were advised to disable the Validating Admission Controller until upgrades could be completed.
On March 24, 2025, the Kubernetes Security Response Committee publicly disclosed five critical ingress-nginx vulnerabilities, including CVE-2025-1974. The most severe issue was described as enabling unauthenticated cluster takeover via the ingress-nginx Validating Admission Controller from the Pod network.
Wiz researchers responsibly disclosed a set of five critical ingress-nginx vulnerabilities to the Kubernetes Security Response Committee and worked with SRC members and ingress-nginx maintainers on fixes.
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Kubernetes maintainers disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in **ingress-nginx** affecting versions `< 1.13.7` and `< 1.14.3`, including **NGINX configuration injection** paths that can lead to **arbitrary code execution** in the ingress-nginx controller context and **Secrets disclosure**. **CVE-2026-24512** allows injection via the Ingress `rules.http.paths.path` field, and **CVE-2026-1580** allows injection via the `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-method` annotation; both are rated **CVSS 8.8** and are especially high impact in default deployments where the controller can read Secrets cluster-wide. Recommended mitigations include upgrading to **v1.13.7**, **v1.14.3**, or later, and (as a temporary control) using validating admission policies to reject risky constructs such as `ImplementationSpecific` path types or the `auth-method` annotation. A separate ingress-nginx issue, **CVE-2026-24514** (CVSS 6.5), affects the validating admission controller feature and enables **denial of service** by sending oversized requests that drive memory consumption, potentially killing the controller pod or exhausting node memory. Detection guidance includes monitoring for unusually large requests (multi-megabyte) to the admission controller and suspicious payloads in `rules.http.paths.path` or the `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-method` annotation. One referenced item describing **CVE-2025-67601** in the *Rancher CLI* (credential/TLS handling weakness involving `--skip-verify`) is a different product and vulnerability and is not part of the ingress-nginx disclosures.
Jun 29, 2026
Belgium's Centre for Cybersecurity warned organizations to patch **Kubernetes ingress-nginx** immediately after disclosure of an arbitrary code execution issue affecting the widely used NGINX Ingress Controller. The flaw, tracked as **`CVE-2026-3288`**, is a high-severity configuration injection vulnerability that lets an authenticated user with permission to create or modify Ingress resources inject arbitrary **nginx** directives through a crafted double quote in the Ingress path field, potentially leading to remote code execution and exposure of secrets accessible to the controller. Sysdig reported that **`CVE-2026-3288`** was fixed on March 9, 2026 and stemmed from an incomplete remediation of the related **`CVE-2026-24512`**. According to the company, sanitization had been added to one code path but omitted from another, while built-in validation relied on an incomplete blocklist that attackers could bypass with payloads such as `return` directives. Affected releases include ingress-nginx versions before **`v1.13.8`**, **`v1.14.4`**, and **`v1.15.0`**; defenders were urged to upgrade, tighten **RBAC** permissions for Ingress changes, and monitor Kubernetes audit logs for signs of exploitation.
Jun 29, 2026
JFrog Security Research disclosed four vulnerabilities in the Chaos Mesh chaos-engineering platform that can let attackers with in-cluster network access compromise Kubernetes environments, including three critical command-injection bugs and one authentication bypass. The issues, tracked as **CVE-2025-59358**, **CVE-2025-59359**, **CVE-2025-59360**, and **CVE-2025-59361**, affect Chaos Mesh deployments prior to **2.7.3** and stem from an exposed unauthenticated GraphQL server plus unsafe shell command construction in the `cleanTcs`, `killProcesses`, and `cleanIptables` mutations. JFrog said the default configuration can expose the GraphQL interface to any pod on the cluster, allowing even an unprivileged workload to reach vulnerable operations. Researchers reported that the flaws can be chained to invoke fault injections, execute arbitrary commands on pods and nodes, steal Kubernetes service account tokens, move laterally, and potentially take over an entire cluster. The command-injection bugs were rated **CVSS 9.8** and are especially dangerous because Chaos Mesh components such as the Controller Manager and Chaos Daemon typically run with elevated privileges. Chaos Mesh has issued fixes, including changes referenced in GitHub pull request **#4702**, and JFrog urged users to upgrade immediately to **Chaos Mesh 2.7.3** or disable the controller server through Helm as a temporary mitigation; platforms that integrate Chaos Mesh, including **Azure Chaos Studio for AKS**, may also be exposed.
Jun 29, 2026