GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.4) CWE-185 vulnerability in istio.io/istio. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Istio: AuthorizationPolicy serviceAccounts regex injection via unescaped dots
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 GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh.
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-9gcg-w975-3rjh 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 356,453 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
istio.io/istioReal-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
The serviceAccounts and notServiceAccounts fields in AuthorizationPolicy incorrectly interpret dots (.) as a regular expression matcher. Because . is a valid character in a service account name, an AuthorizationPolicy ALLOW rule targeting SA e.g. cert-manager.io also matches cert-manager-io, cert-managerXio, etc. A DENY rule targeting the same name fails to block those variants.
Patches
Fixes are available in 1.29.2, 1.28.6, and 1.27.9
Workarounds
None
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | istio.io/istio | ≥ 0.0.0-20241024090207-0bf27d49ba4b&&< 0.0.0-20260403004500-692e460c342d | 0.0.0-20260403004500-692e460c342d |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for istio.io/istio. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update istio.io/istio to 0.0.0-20260403004500-692e460c342d or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh. 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-9gcg-w975-3rjh in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-9gcg-w975-3rjh across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.