Istio up to 1.6.7 Policy privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Istio. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component Policy Handler. The manipulation leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2020-16844. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Istio. This issue affects an unknown code of the component Policy Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In Istio 1.5.0 though 1.5.8 and Istio 1.6.0 through 1.6.7, when users specify an AuthorizationPolicy resource with DENY actions using wildcard suffixes (e.g. *-some-suffix) for source principals or namespace fields, callers will never be denied access, bypassing the intended policy.

The weakness was presented 10/01/2020 as ISTIO-SECURITY-2020-009 as confirmed security bulletin (Website). The advisory is shared at istio.io. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2020-16844 since 08/04/2020. The exploitation is known to be difficult. The attack may be initiated remotely. A simple authentication is needed for exploitation. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue. The advisory points out:

Callers to TCP services that have a defined Authorization Policies with DENY actions using wildcard suffixes (e.g. *-some-suffix) for source principals or namespace fields will never be denied access.

Upgrading to version 1.5.9 or 1.6.8 eliminates this vulnerability. The upgrade is hosted for download at istio.io. A possible mitigation has been published immediately after the disclosure of the vulnerability. The security bulletin contains the following remark:

Do not use suffix matching in DENY policies in the source principal or namespace field for TCP services and use Prefix and Exact matching where applicable. Where possible change TCP to HTTP for port name suffixes in your Services.

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Productinfo

Name

• Istio

Version

• 1.5.0
• 1.5.1
• 1.5.2
• 1.5.3
• 1.5.4
• 1.5.5
• 1.5.6
• 1.5.7
• 1.5.8
• 1.6.0
• 1.6.1
• 1.6.2
• 1.6.3
• 1.6.4
• 1.6.5
• 1.6.6
• 1.6.7

CPE 2.3info

• 🔍
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CPE 2.2info

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