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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.0

CVE-2022-21701 json

Privileged Escalation in Istio

published 2022-01-19 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-26894

cvss
5.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Istio is an open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices. In versions 1.12.0 and 1.12.1 Istio is vulnerable to a privilege escalation attack. Users who have `CREATE` permission for `gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io` objects can escalate this privilege to create other resources that they may not have access to, such as `Pod`. This vulnerability impacts only an Alpha level feature, the Kubernetes Gateway API. This is not the same as the Istio Gateway type (gateways.networking.istio.io), which is not vulnerable. Users are advised to upgrade to resolve this issue. Users unable to upgrade should implement any of the following which will prevent this vulnerability: Remove the gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io CustomResourceDefinition, set PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_DEPLOYMENT_CONTROLLER=true environment variable in Istiod, or remove CREATE permissions for gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io objects from untrusted users.

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2022-21701 updated cvss 8.8

istio: Privileged Escalation in Kubernetes Gateway API

  • Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 1 servicemesh, servicemesh-mixc, servicemesh-mixs, servicemesh-galley, servicemesh-citadel, servicemesh-istioctl, +3 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.1 servicemesh, servicemesh-cni, servicemesh-pilot-agent, servicemesh-pilot-discovery
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.0 servicemesh, servicemesh-mixc, servicemesh-mixs, servicemesh-istioctl, servicemesh-pilot-agent, servicemesh-pilot-discovery
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
18 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.77% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.0 AV:N/AC:M/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

  • istio istio

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.