CVE-2022-39395 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.6) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Vela Insecure Defaults
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-39395.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Description
Vela is a Pipeline Automation (CI/CD) framework built on Linux container technology written in Golang. In Vela Server and Vela Worker prior to version 0.16.0 and Vela UI prior to version 0.17.0, some default configurations for Vela allow exploitation and container breakouts. Users should upgrade to Server 0.16.0, Worker 0.16.0, and UI 0.17.0 to fix the issue. After upgrading, Vela administrators will need to explicitly change the default settings to configure Vela as desired. Some of the fixes will interrupt existing workflows and will require Vela administrators to modify default settings. However, not applying the patch (or workarounds) will continue existing risk exposure. Some workarounds are available. Vela administrators can adjust the worker's VELA_RUNTIME_PRIVILEGED_IMAGES setting to be explicitly empty, leverage the VELA_REPO_ALLOWLIST setting on the server component to restrict access to a list of repositories that are allowed to be enabled, and/or audit enabled repositories and disable pull_requests if they are not needed.
Affected Products
servergo-velauigo-velaworkergo-velaDetection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Fix
Upgrade the affected component to the fixed release for CVE-2022-39395, or apply your distribution's backported patch — distro builds are often patched at an older version number, so check your vendor's advisory rather than the upstream version alone.
Workarounds
Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-39395 in your dependencies?
Find it across your dependency tree, including transitive dependencies.