CVE-2026-15228Kong Kubernetes Ingress Controller cluster-wide ingress configuration DoS via CA-certificate ID collision
- 7.1HighCVSS base score
- 0.23%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 86% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Kong Kubernetes Ingress Controller (KIC) allows a user with namespace-scoped Secret creation privileges to cause a cluster-wide ingress configuration denial of service. KIC collects CA-certificate Secrets across all watched namespaces using a label selector alone, without ingress-class or namespace restrictions. The CA-certificate primary key is derived from a user-supplied field in the Secret. Duplicate CA-certificate IDs cause Kong Gateway to reject the entire configuration document and halting all ingress changes cluster-wide.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Kong
- 20 days later
· 20 days later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| KongCNA (assigner) | 4.0 | High7.1 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| NVDNVD · Awaiting Analysis | 4.0 | High7.1 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.23% · top 86% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.1.
Affected products
Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller
- affected 3.4.0 – < 3.4.18
- affected 3.5.0 – < 3.5.11
What to do
Solution: Users should upgrade to the patched version of KIC (3.4.18; 3.5.11)
Workaround: * Restrict watch scope: Set --watch-namespace (or env CONTROLLER_WATCH_NAMESPACE) to only include trusted namespaces. This prevents the embedded KIC from ingesting Secrets from untrusted namespaces. * Restrict Secret labeling via RBAC: Use Kubernetes RBAC to prevent untrusted users from creating or modifying Secrets with the labels konghq.com/secret=true and konghq.com/ca-cert=true. Consider using an admission webhook or OPA/Kyverno policy to enforce this label restriction. * Audit existing CA-cert Secrets: Inspect Secrets labeled konghq.com/ca-cert=true across all watched namespaces for unexpected or duplicate data.id values. Remove any that were not provisioned by a trusted operator.
References
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-50353 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-15228)Record last updated .