CVE-2026-26963 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) CWE-863 vulnerability in github.com/cilium/cilium. A fix is available for github.com/cilium/cilium — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Cilium may not enforce host firewall policies when Native Routing, WireGuard and Node Encryption are enabled
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-2026-26963.
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
Host Policies will incorrectly permit traffic from Pods on other nodes when all of the following configurations are enabled:
These options are disabled by default in Cilium.
Patches
This issue was fixed by #42892.
This issue affects:
- Cilium v1.18 between v1.18.0 and v1.18.5 inclusive
This issue is fixed in:
- Cilium v1.18.6
Workarounds
There is currently no officially verified or comprehensive workaround for this issue. The following procedure has been validated strictly within a local 'Kind' environment and has not undergone exhaustive testing across diverse production architectures. Proceed with caution.
To mitigate the identified traffic bypass, ensure all ingress traffic from the cilium_wg0 interface is explicitly routed to cilium_host for policy enforcement. This ensures that host-level security policies are applied to decrypted WireGuard traffic. Execute the following configuration on each CiliumNode:
# IPv4 Traffic
ip rule add iif cilium_wg0 table 300
ip route add default dev cilium_host table 300
# IPv6 Traffic
ip -6 rule add iif cilium_wg0 table 300
ip -6 route add default dev cilium_net table 300
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to @julianwiedmann for reporting the issue and helping with the resolution.
For more information
If you think you have found a vulnerability affecting Cilium, we strongly encourage you to report it to our security mailing list at [email protected]. This is a private mailing list for the Cilium security team, and your report will be treated as top priority. Please also address any comments or questions on this advisory to the same mailing list.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/cilium/cilium | ≥ 1.18.0&&< 1.18.6 | 1.18.6go get github.com/cilium/cilium@v1.18.6 |
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 1.18.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-26963 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-26963 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.