GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 — ingress-nginx
HIGHGHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.6) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in k8s.io/ingress-nginx. A fix is available for k8s.io/ingress-nginx — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ingress nginx annotation injection causes arbitrary command execution
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
k8s.io/ingress-nginxReal-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
Issue Details
A security issue was identified in ingress-nginx where the nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/configuration-snippet annotation on an Ingress object (in the networking.k8s.io or extensions API group) can be used to inject arbitrary commands, and obtain the credentials of the ingress-nginx controller. In the default configuration, that credential has access to all secrets in the cluster.
This issue has been rated High (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L), and assigned CVE-2023-5043.
Affected Components and Configurations
This bug affects ingress-nginx. If you do not have ingress-nginx installed on your cluster, you are not affected. You can check this by running kubectl get po -n ingress-nginx.
If you are running the “chrooted” ingress-nginx controller introduced in v1.2.0 (gcr.io/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/controller-chroot), command execution is possible but credential extraction is not, so the High severity does not apply.
Multi-tenant environments where non-admin users have permissions to create Ingress objects are most affected by this issue.
Affected Versions
<v1.9.0
Versions allowing mitigation
v1.9.0
Mitigation
Ingress Administrators should set the --enable-annotation-validation flag to enforce restrictions on the contents of ingress-nginx annotation fields.
Detection
If you find evidence that this vulnerability has been exploited, please contact [email protected]
Additional Details
See ingress-nginx Issue #10571 for more details.
Acknowledgements
This vulnerability was reported by suanve
Thank You, CJ Cullen on behalf of the Kubernetes Security Response Committee
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | k8s.io/ingress-nginx | all versions | 1.9.0go get k8s.io/ingress-nginx@v1.9.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
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.
Fix
Update k8s.io/ingress-nginx to 1.9.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
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 O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.