CVE-2022-2403 in OpenShift Container Platform
Summary
by MITRE • 09/02/2022
A credentials leak was found in the OpenShift Container Platform. The private key for the external cluster certificate was stored incorrectly in the oauth-serving-cert ConfigMaps, and accessible to any authenticated OpenShift user or service-account. A malicious user could exploit this flaw by reading the oauth-serving-cert ConfigMap in the openshift-config-managed namespace, compromising any web traffic secured using that certificate.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/11/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2022-2403 represents a critical credentials exposure issue within the OpenShift Container Platform ecosystem. This flaw stems from improper storage and access control mechanisms for cryptographic materials essential to securing cluster communications. The vulnerability specifically affects the handling of private keys associated with external cluster certificates, creating a significant security risk for organizations relying on OpenShift for containerized application deployment and management.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability manifests through the incorrect storage of private cryptographic keys within the oauth-serving-cert ConfigMaps located in the openshift-config-managed namespace. This misconfiguration allows any authenticated user or service account within the OpenShift environment to access these sensitive configuration objects through standard Kubernetes API calls. The flaw operates at the intersection of privilege escalation and credential exposure, where the principle of least privilege is violated by granting unnecessary access to cryptographic materials. According to CWE-732, this represents an incorrect permission assignment that allows unauthorized access to security-critical resources.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends far beyond simple credential exposure, as it compromises the entire transport layer security infrastructure of affected clusters. Any web traffic secured using the compromised certificate becomes vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, where malicious actors can intercept and potentially modify communications between clients and cluster services. The vulnerability affects the integrity and confidentiality of all applications relying on the OAuth serving certificate for authentication and secure communication. This represents a significant risk to organizations operating multi-tenant environments where the compromise of one user's access could potentially expose communications for the entire cluster.
From a threat modeling perspective, this vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1552.001 for credentials harvesting and T1071.004 for application layer protocol traffic. The attack vector leverages legitimate authentication mechanisms to access configuration data, making detection more challenging. Organizations utilizing OpenShift's OAuth capabilities for user authentication and service-to-service communication face particular risk, as the compromised certificate could enable attackers to impersonate legitimate cluster services and gain unauthorized access to protected resources.
The remediation approach requires immediate implementation of proper access controls for sensitive ConfigMap objects, ensuring that cryptographic materials are restricted to authorized service accounts and components only. Organizations should implement RBAC policies that limit access to the openshift-config-managed namespace and specifically restrict access to the oauth-serving-cert ConfigMap. Additionally, the certificate rotation process should be automated to minimize exposure windows, and regular security audits should verify that cryptographic materials are properly secured. The vulnerability highlights the importance of following security best practices for managing sensitive data in container orchestration platforms and demonstrates the critical need for regular security assessments of configuration management systems.