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Vulnerability record · CVE-2022-39278 · published 13 October 2022

CVE-2022-39278: Istio uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability

Istio · Istio

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.

7.5 CVSS 3.1 High EPSS 1.2% · top 33.4% CWE-400 · Uncontrolled resource consumption
7.5CVSS 3.1 base score
1.2%EPSS exploitation probability, 30 days
NoNot in CISA KEV
1Affected product versions listed by NVD
8References
17 Jun 2026Last modified by NVD

Description

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.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

1 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.

References

LinkTags
https://github.com/istio/istio/security/advisories/GHSA-86vr-4wcv-mm9w Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/latest/news/releases/1.13.x/announcing-1.13.9/ Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/latest/news/releases/1.15.x/announcing-1.15.2/ Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/news/releases/1.14.x/announcing-1.14.5/ Third Party Advisory
https://github.com/istio/istio/security/advisories/GHSA-86vr-4wcv-mm9w Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/latest/news/releases/1.13.x/announcing-1.13.9/ Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/latest/news/releases/1.15.x/announcing-1.15.2/ Third Party Advisory
https://istio.io/news/releases/1.14.x/announcing-1.14.5/ Third Party Advisory

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Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.

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Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2022-39278), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-29). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.