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CRITICAL severity

CVE-2025-1974 — ingress-nginx

CRITICAL

CVE-2025-1974 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-653 vulnerability in k8s.io/ingress-nginx. 7 public exploit references exist, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for k8s.io/ingress-nginx — see the affected versions and patch details below.

ingress-nginx admission controller RCE escalation

Also known asGHSA-mgvx-rpfc-9mpvGO-2025-3567
Published
Updated
Affected
2 pkgs
Patched
2 / 2
Exploits
7 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 23, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Proof-of-concept exploit code exists

  • CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-1974.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
99.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
87.5%91.6%95.8%100.0%90.3%99.4%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2025-1974 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

2 pkgs affected
🐹k8s.io/ingress-nginx🐹k8s.io/ingress-nginx

Real-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

A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where under certain conditions, an unauthenticated attacker with access to the pod network can achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller. This can lead to disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets cluster-wide.)

Affected Packages

2 total 2 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐹Gok8s.io/ingress-nginxall versions1.11.5go get k8s.io/ingress-nginx@v1.11.5
🐹Gok8s.io/ingress-nginx≥ 1.12.0-beta.0&&< 1.12.11.12.1go get k8s.io/ingress-nginx@v1.12.1
Exploits & PoCs
7

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

EDB-52338remotemultiple✓ Verified

Ingress-NGINX 4.11.0 - Remote Code Execution (RCE)

by Likhith Appalaneni · Jun 20, 2025

Exploit-DB Source
EDB-52475remotemultiple

Ingress-NGINX Admission Controller v1.11.1 - FD Injection to RCE

by Beatriz Fresno Naumova · Feb 4, 2026

Exploit-DB Source

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for k8s.io/ingress-nginx, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update k8s.io/ingress-nginx to 1.11.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-1974 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

How to detect CVE-2025-1974

A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:

nuclei -id cve-2025-1974 -u https://target
Template
Ingress-Nginx Controller - Remote Code Execution
Severity
critical
Impact
Vulnerable versions of Ingress-Nginx controller can be exploited to gain unauthorized access to all secrets across namespaces in the Kubernetes cluster, potentially leading to complete cluster takeover.
Remediation
Update to one of the following versions: Version 1.12.1 or later / Version 1.11.5 or later

Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (iamnoooob, rootxharsh, pdresearch), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.

Frequently Asked Questions

A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where under certain conditions, an unauthenticated attacker with access to the pod network can achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller. This can lead to disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets cluster-wide.)
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2025-1974: ingress-nginx RCE — Fixed in 1.11.5