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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.0

CVE-2023-40026 json

Path traversal allows leaking out-of-bound Helm charts from Argo CD repo-server

published 2023-09-27 3 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-6jqw-jwf5-rp8h , GO-2023-2085 , EUVD-2023-2447

cvss
5.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 49%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Argo CD is a declarative continuous deployment framework for Kubernetes. In Argo CD versions prior to 2.3 (starting at least in v0.1.0, but likely in any version using Helm before 2.3), using a specifically-crafted Helm file could reference external Helm charts handled by the same repo-server to leak values, or files from the referenced Helm Chart. This was possible because Helm paths were predictable. The vulnerability worked by adding a Helm chart that referenced Helm resources from predictable paths. Because the paths of Helm charts were predictable and available on an instance of repo-server, it was possible to reference and then render the values and resources from other existing Helm charts regardless of permissions. While generally, secrets are not stored in these files, it was nevertheless possible to reference any values from these charts. This issue was fixed in Argo CD 2.3 and subsequent versions by randomizing Helm paths. User's still using Argo CD 2.3 or below are advised to update to a supported version. If this is not possible, disabling Helm chart rendering, or using an additional repo-server for each Helm chart would prevent possible exploitation.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 2.3.0
  • argoproj argo_cd 2.3.0

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-2023-40026 updated cvss 5.0

argo-cd: path traversal allows leaking out-of-bound Helm charts from Argo CD repo-server

  • Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 acm-cluster-templates-operator-container Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4 odf4/odr-rhel8-operator Red Hat OpenShift GitOps openshift-gitops-1/argocd-rhel8, openshift-gitops-1/gitops-rhel8, openshift-gitops-1/gitops-rhel8-operator
    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
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.61% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 49% 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:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N
NVD 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/argoproj/argo-cd
<=1.8.7
all versions
 no fix listed
go github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2
<2.3.0
2.3.0

Affected products

  • argoproj argo-cd

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
  • CWE-23 Relative Path Traversal

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.