CVE-2023-34242 — cilium
LOWCVE-2023-34242 is a low-severity (CVSS 3.4) Information Exposure vulnerability in github.com/cilium/cilium. A fix is available for github.com/cilium/cilium — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Cilium vulnerable to information leakage via incorrect ReferenceGrant handling
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2023-34242.
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
Real-World Exposure
github.com/cilium/ciliumReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
When the Gateway API is enabled in Cilium, the absence of a check on the namespace in which a ReferenceGrant is created could result in Cilium gaining visibility of secrets (including certificates) and services across namespaces.
An attacker on an affected cluster can configure Cilium to use cluster secrets or communicate with services that it should not have access to.
Gateway API functionality is disabled by default.
Patches
This vulnerability is fixed in Cilium release 1.13.4.
Cilium versions <1.13 are not affected.
Workarounds
There is no workaround to this issue.
Acknowledgements
The Cilium community has worked together with members of Isovalent to prepare these mitigations. Special thanks to @meyskens for investigating and fixing the issue.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please reach out on Slack.
As usual, if you think you found a related vulnerability, we strongly encourage you to report security vulnerabilities to our private security mailing list: [email protected] - first, before disclosing them in any public forums. This is a private mailing list where only members of the Cilium internal security team are subscribed to, and is treated as top priority.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/cilium/cilium | ≥ 1.13.0&&< 1.13.4 | 1.13.4go get github.com/cilium/cilium@v1.13.4 |
Affected Products
ciliumciliumDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/cilium/cilium, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/cilium/cilium to 1.13.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-34242 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-34242 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.