Know every vulnerabilitybefore it knows you.
DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.
GHSA-hj57-j5cw-2mwp
No affected components available
Impact
Unprivileged software in VMware VMs, including software running in unprivileged containers, can retrieve an Ignition config stored in a hypervisor guestinfo variable or OVF environment. If the Ignition config contains secrets, this can result in the compromise of sensitive information.
Patches
Ignition 2.14.0 and later adds a new systemd service, ignition-delete-config.service, that deletes the Ignition config from supported hypervisors (currently VMware and VirtualBox) during the first boot. This ensures that unprivileged software cannot retrieve the Ignition config from the hypervisor.
If you have external tooling that requires the Ignition config to remain accessible in VM metadata after provisioning, and your Ignition config does not include sensitive information, you can prevent Ignition 2.14.0 and later from deleting the config by masking ignition-delete-config.service. For example:
{
"ignition": {
"version": "3.0.0"
},
"systemd": {
"units": [
{
"name": "ignition-delete-config.service",
"mask": true
}
]
}
}
Workarounds
Avoid storing secrets in Ignition configs. In addition to VMware, many cloud platforms allow unprivileged software in a VM to retrieve the Ignition config from a networked cloud metadata service. While platform-specific mitigation is possible, such as firewall rules that prevent access to the metadata service, it's best to store secrets in a dedicated platform such as Hashicorp Vault.
Advice to Linux distributions
Linux distributions that ship Ignition should ensure the new ignition-delete-config.service is installed and enabled by default.
In addition, we recommend shipping a service similar to ignition-delete-config.service that runs when existing machines are upgraded, similar to the one in https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-config/pull/1738. Consider giving your users advance notice of this change, and providing instructions for masking ignition-delete-config.service on existing nodes if users have tooling that requires the Ignition config to remain accessible in VM metadata.
References
For more information, see #1300 and #1350.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, open an issue in Ignition or email the CoreOS development mailing list.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
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.
Browse More
Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.
Checkout DevGuard