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TI-2022-18654 Aliases CVE-2022-39278

Istio vulnerable to denial of service attack due to Golang Regex Library

Priority MEDIUM 42CWE-400Published · Updated

Key facts

Attack vector
Network
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Attack complexity
Low
Impact type
Denial of service
Confidentiality · integrity · availability
None · None · High
Fix status
Partial Red Hat: 1 fixed, 1 without a fix

Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat. Impact type from CWE-400.

Summary

Istio is an open platform-independent service mesh that provides traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. Prior to versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9, the Istio control plane, istiod, is vulnerable to a request processing error, allowing a malicious attacker that sends a specially crafted or oversized message which results in the control plane crashing when the Kubernetes validating or mutating webhook service is exposed publicly. This endpoint is served over TLS port 15017, 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 external istiod topologies, this port is exposed over the public internet. Versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9 contain patches for this issue. There are no effective workarounds, beyond upgrading. This bug is due to an error in `regexp.Compile` in Go.

Why it matters now

Exploitation None reported CISA SSVC · not in CISA KEV
EPSS 0.01436 73rd percentileScored 2026-11-07
Fix Partial istio (istio): 1.13.9, 1.14.5, 1.15.2Red Hat: 1 advisoryRed Hat: 1 fixed, 1 without a fix

SSVC decision points

CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3

Exploitation
None
Automatable
Yes
Technical impact
Partial

The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed inStatusSource
istioistiobefore 1.13.9; 1.14.0 to before 1.14.5; 1.15.0 to before 1.15.21.13.9, 1.14.5, 1.15.2Patch availableCNA
  • istio Vendoristio Affected before 1.13.9; 1.14.0 to before 1.14.5; 1.15.0 to before 1.15.2 Fixed in 1.13.9, 1.14.5, 1.15.2 Patch available CNA

CPE configurations NVD · 1

CPEVersionsRoleVendor
cpe:2.3:a:istio:istio:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*before 1.13.9; 1.14.0 to before 1.14.5; 1.15.0 to before 1.15.2Vulnerableistio
  • cpe:2.3:a:istio:istio:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* Versions before 1.13.9; 1.14.0 to before 1.14.5; 1.15.0 to before 1.15.2 Vulnerable ·istio

Remediation

  • Fix · CNA istio (istio) Fixed in 1.13.9, 1.14.5, 1.15.2

Red Hat 1 advisory

  • RHSA-2023:0542 Released 2023-01-30 · Red Hat rating Important
    Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.3.1 Containers security update
    • RHOSSM 2.3 for RHEL 8 openshift-service-mesh/istio-cni-rhel8, openshift-service-mesh/istio-rhel8-operator, openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel8 +4

Vendor assessments

Red Hat

Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →

ProductStatusPlan or fix
OpenShift Service Mesh 2.1AffectedNo fix planned: Will not fix
RHOSSM 2.3 for RHEL 8Fixed RHSA-2023:0542
Not affected: 1 product
  • RHOSSM 2.3 for RHEL 8

Timeline

  1. 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2022-39278

References

Advisory 4

  • TI-2026-79288 Out-of-bounds write in Google Brotli decoder KEVCVSS 4.0CRITICAL 9.2
  • TI-2023-23979 The HTTP/2 protocol allows a denial of service (server resource consumption) because… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5
  • TI-2022-06055 Authorization Policy bypass in Istio CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
  • TI-2021-11909 Istio before 1.8.6 and 1.9.x before 1.9.5 contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability… CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
  • TI-2026-24390 Istio JWKS resolver to prevent private key material from being exposed when JWKS fetch fails. CVSS 4.0HIGH 8.7
  • TI-2022-13090 Ill-formed headers may lead to unexpected behavior in Istio CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
See all 28 →

Sources

This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences