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IngressNginx

Critical NGINX Ingress Vulnerabilities Expose Kubernetes Clusters to Compromise 

Security Advisory

Summary:

The Kubernetes Ingress NGINX Admission Controller has detected 5 significant security vulnerabilities affecting all versions of the ingress-nginx controller prior to v1.12.1 and v1.11.5. Here are the cve ids CVE-2025-1974, CVE-2025-1098, CVE-2025-1097, CVE-2025-24514, and CVE-2025-24513.

Maintainer Kubernetes ingress community 
Severity Critical 
CVSS Score 9.8 
No. of Vulnerabilities Patched 05 
Actively Exploited No 
Exploited in Wild No 
Patch Available Yes 
Advisory Version 1.0 

Overview 

Admission Controllers frequently don’t require authentication and essentially function as web servers, introducing an additional internal network-accessible endpoint in the cluster. This architecture allows attackers to access them directly from any pod in the network, significantly increasing the attack surface.

The most critical of these, CVE-2025-1974, allows attackers on the pod network to remotely execute code and gain full control of the cluster without authentication. 

Although there has not been any active exploitation in the wild, this vulnerability poses a serious risk as it could enable attackers to take complete control of a cluster.

The issue was publicly disclosed on March 24, 2025, and security patches have been released. 

Vulnerability Name CVE ID Product Affected Severity CVSS Score 
Admission Controller Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability  CVE-2025-1974      Ingress NGINX Admission Controller   Critical 9.8 
Configuration Injection via Unsanitized auth-tls-match-cn annotation  CVE-2025-1097 High 8.8 
Configuration Injection via Unsanitized Mirror Annotations  CVE-2025-1098 High 8.8 
Unsanitized auth-URL Injection Vulnerability  CVE-2025-24514 High 8.8 
Auth Secret File Path Traversal Vulnerability  CVE-2025-24513 Medium 4.8 

Technical Summary 

CVE ID System Affected Vulnerability Details Impact 
  CVE-2025-1974         Ingress NGINX Controller v1.12.0 & v1.11.4 and below versions The Validating Admission Controller does not properly check incoming annotations, allowing attackers on the Pod network to inject configurations and potentially execute arbitrary code across the entire cluster.   Full Kubernetes cluster compromise 
  CVE-2025-1097 Improper validation of the auth-tls-match-cn annotation allows malicious annotation values to override controller configurations.  Remote code execution 
  CVE-2025-1098 Unsafe input handling in mirror annotations could result in unauthorized configuration manipulation.  Config injection, security bypass 
  CVE-2025-24514 Unsanitized input from auth-URL annotations can allow malicious URLs to modify ingress-controller behavior.  Remote code execution 
  CVE-2025-24513 A path traversal issue in handling auth secret files could let attackers access sensitive information.   Information disclosure 

Remediation

  • Apply Patches Promptly: Immediately upgrade to ingress-nginx v1.12.1, v1.11.5 or latest versions to mitigate the vulnerabilities. 
  • Temporarily Disable the Validating Admission Controller: It is mandatory to upgrade. If upgrading is not immediately possible, you can temporarily disable the Validating Admission Controller. 

General Recommendations: 

  • Set strict RBAC rules to control who can change ingress and webhook settings. 
  • Disable dynamic admission controllers if they aren’t needed. 
  • Monitor cluster audit logs for unusual ingress creation activities and suspicious annotations. 
  • Conduct security reviews and scans for clusters that have not recently been updated. 
  • Regularly check ingredients for weak or unsafe configurations. 

Conclusion: 

The Kubernetes ingress-nginx vulnerabilities disclosed in March 2025 are among the most severe to date, with CVE-2025-1974 posing a real threat of full cluster compromise. All organizations running affected versions must apply patches or mitigation steps immediately.

The vulnerabilities found are affecting the admission controller component of Ingress NGINX Controller for Kubernetes and highlight the importance of strict configuration validation and access control in Kubernetes environments. 

Security researchers from Wiz found that 43% of cloud environments are vulnerable to these vulnerabilities. They uncovered over 6,500 clusters, including Fortune 500 companies, that publicly expose vulnerable Kubernetes ingress controllers’ admission controllers to the public internet—putting them at immediate critical risk. 

References