CVE-2024-42486

Workarounds

Any modification of a related Gateway/HTTPRoute/GRPCRoute/TCPRoute CRD (for example, adding any label to any of these resources) will trigger a reconciliation of ReferenceGrants on an affected cluster.

Acknowledgements

The Cilium community has worked together with members of Cure53 and Isovalent to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @sayboras for resolving this issue.

For more information

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

If you think you have found a vulnerability affecting Cilium, we strongly encourage you to report it to our security mailing list at [email protected]. This is a private mailing list for the Cilium security team, and your report will be treated as top priority.

Due to ReferenceGrant changes not being immediately propagated in Cilium's GatewayAPI controller, Gateway resources are able to access secrets in other namespaces after the associated ReferenceGrant has been revoked. This can lead to Gateways continuing to establish sessions using secrets that they should no longer have access to.

CVE-2024-42486 has a CVSS score of 5.4 (Medium). The vector is network-reachable, 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 (1.16.1, 1.15.8); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

Kodem intelligence

This issue was resolved in https://github.com/cilium/cilium/pull/34032.

This issue affects:

• Cilium v1.15 between v1.15.0 and v1.15.7 inclusive
• Cilium v1.16.0

This issue has been patched in:

• Cilium v1.15.8
• Cilium v1.16.1

1. What is CVE-2024-42486? CVE-2024-42486 is a medium-severity security vulnerability in github.com/cilium/cilium (go), affecting versions = 1.16.0. It is fixed in 1.16.1, 1.15.8.
2. How severe is CVE-2024-42486? CVE-2024-42486 has a CVSS score of 5.4 (Medium). 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-2024-42486? github.com/cilium/cilium (go) versions = 1.16.0 is affected.
4. Is there a fix for CVE-2024-42486? Yes. CVE-2024-42486 is fixed in 1.16.1, 1.15.8. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is CVE-2024-42486 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2024-42486 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-2024-42486 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-2024-42486?
   • Upgrade github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.16.1 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.15.8 or later