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GHSA-6p4m-hw2h-6gmw
No affected components available
Impact
All Argo CD versions starting with 2.5.0-rc1 are vulnerable to an authorization bypass bug which allows a malicious Argo CD user to deploy Applications outside the configured allowed namespaces.
Description of exploit
Reconciled Application namespaces are specified as a comma-delimited list of glob patterns. When sharding is enabled on the Application controller, it does not enforce that list of patterns when reconciling Applications. For example, if Application namespaces are configured to be argocd-*, the Application controller may reconcile an Application installed in a namespace called other, even though it does not start with argocd-.
Reconciliation of the out-of-bounds Application is only triggered when the Application is updated, so the attacker must be able to cause an update operation on the Application resource.
Limitations
This bug only applies to users who have explicitly enabled the "apps-in-any-namespace" feature by setting application.namespaces in the argocd-cmd-params-cm ConfigMap or otherwise setting the --application-namespaces flags on the Application controller and API server components. The apps-in-any-namespace feature is in beta as of this Security Advisory's publish date.
The bug is also limited to Argo CD instances where sharding is enabled by increasing the replicas count for the Application controller.
Finally, the AppProjects' sourceNamespaces field acts as a secondary check against this exploit. To cause reconciliation of an Application in an out-of-bounds namespace, an AppProject must be available which permits Applications in the out-of-bounds namespace.
Patches
A patch for this vulnerability has been released in the following Argo CD versions:
- v2.5.8
- v2.6.0-rc5
Workarounds
Running only one replica of the Application controller will prevent exploitation of this bug.
Making sure all AppProjects' sourceNamespaces are restricted within the confines of the configured Application namespaces will also prevent exploitation of this bug.
Credits
Thanks to ChangZhuo Chen (@czchen) for finding the issue and for contributing the fix!
References
For more information
- Open an issue in the Argo CD issue tracker or discussions
- Join us on Slack in channel #argo-cd
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is difficult for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability and may require special conditions. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability can affect other systems as well, not just the initial system. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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