CVE-2024-28860

Workarounds

There is no workaround to this issue. IPsec transparent encryption users are strongly encouraged to upgrade.

Acknowledgements

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Cure53 and Isovalent to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @NikAleksandrov and @pchaigno for their work on remediating the issue. Thanks to Marsh Ray, Senior Software Developer at Microsoft, for input and guidance on the fix.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please reach out on Slack.

As usual, if you think you found a related vulnerability, we strongly encourage you to report security vulnerabilities to our private security mailing list: [email protected] - first, before disclosing them in any public forums. This is a private mailing list where only members of the Cilium internal security team are subscribed to, and is treated as top priority.

Users of IPsec transparent encryption in Cilium may be vulnerable to cryptographic attacks that render the transparent encryption ineffective.

In particular, Cilium is vulnerable to the following attacks by a man-in-the-middle attacker:

• Chosen plaintext attacks
• Key recovery attacks
• Replay attacks

These attacks are possible due to an ESP sequence number collision when multiple nodes are configured with the same key. Fixed versions of Cilium use unique keys for each IPsec tunnel established between nodes, resolving all of the above attacks.

Important: After upgrading, users must perform a key rotation using the instructions here to ensure that they are no longer vulnerable to this issue. Please note that the key rotation instructions have recently been updated, and users must use the new instructions to properly establish secure IPsec tunnels. To validate that the new instructions have been followed properly, ensure that the IPsec Kubernetes secret contains a "+" sign.

CVE-2024-28860 has a CVSS score of 8.0 (High). The vector is reachable from an adjacent network, no privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (1.13.14, 1.14.9, 1.15.3); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

Kodem intelligence

All prior versions of Cilium that support IPsec transparent encryption (Cilium 1.4 onwards) are affected by this issue.

Patched versions:

• Cilium 1.15.3
• Cilium 1.14.9
• Cilium 1.13.14

1. What is CVE-2024-28860? CVE-2024-28860 is a high-severity security vulnerability in github.com/cilium/cilium (go), affecting versions >= 1.4.0, <= 1.13.13. It is fixed in 1.13.14, 1.14.9, 1.15.3.
2. How severe is CVE-2024-28860? CVE-2024-28860 has a CVSS score of 8.0 (High). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
3. Which versions of github.com/cilium/cilium are affected by CVE-2024-28860? github.com/cilium/cilium (go) versions >= 1.4.0, <= 1.13.13 is affected.
4. Is there a fix for CVE-2024-28860? Yes. CVE-2024-28860 is fixed in 1.13.14, 1.14.9, 1.15.3. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is CVE-2024-28860 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2024-28860 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
6. What actually determines whether CVE-2024-28860 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
7. How do I fix CVE-2024-28860?
   • Upgrade github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.13.14 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.14.9 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.15.3 or later