content/en/news/security/istio-security-2022-002/index.md
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Istio version 1.12.0 and 1.12.1 are 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.
Your cluster may be impacted if:
kubectl get crd gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io.PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_DEPLOYMENT_CONTROLLER=false environment variable in Istiod (this is defaulted to true).CREATE permissions for gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io objects.If you are unable to upgrade, any of the following will prevent this vulnerability:
gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io CustomResourceDefinition.PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_DEPLOYMENT_CONTROLLER=false environment variable in Istiod.CREATE permissions for gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io objects from untrusted users.We would like to thank Anthony Weems.