GHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj — v2
CRITICALGHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj is a critical-severity (CVSS 10) Information Exposure vulnerability in github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2. A fix is available for github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Argo CD will blindly trust JWT claims if anonymous access is enabled
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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.
- 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-r642-gv9p-2wjj.
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-r642-gv9p-2wjj 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 377,636 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
github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2🐹github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2🐹github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2🐹github.com/argoproj/argo-cdReal-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
A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Argo CD which would allow unauthenticated users to impersonate as any Argo CD user or role, including the admin user, by sending a specifically crafted JSON Web Token (JWT) along with the request. In order for this vulnerability to be exploited, anonymous access to the Argo CD instance must have been enabled.
In a default Argo CD installation, anonymous access is disabled. To find out if anonymous access is enabled in your instance, please see the Workarounds section of this advisory below.
The vulnerability can be exploited to impersonate as any user or role, including the built-in admin account regardless of whether that account is enabled or disabled. Also, the attacker does not need an account on the Argo CD instance in order to exploit this.
If anonymous access to the instance is enabled, an attacker can:
-
Escalate their privileges, effectively allowing them to gain the same privileges on the cluster as the Argo CD instance, which is cluster admin in a default installation. This will allow the attacker to create, manipulate and delete any resource on the cluster.
-
Exfiltrate data by deploying malicious workloads with elevated privileges, thus bypassing any redaction of sensitive data otherwise enforced by the Argo CD API
We strongly recommend that all users of Argo CD update to a version containing this patch as soon as possible, regardless of whether or not anonymous access is enabled in your instance.
Please see below for a list of versions containing a fix for this vulnerability and any possible workarounds existing for this issue.
Patches
A patch for this vulnerability has been released in the following Argo CD versions:
- v2.3.4
- v2.2.9
- v2.1.15
Workarounds
Disable anonymous access
If you are not able to upgrade to a patched version quickly, we highly suggest disabling anonymous access if it is enabled.
To find out whether anonymous access is enabled for your Argo CD instance, you can query the argocd-cm ConfigMap in the Argo CD's installation namespace. The below example assumes you have installed Argo CD to the argocd namespace:
$ kubectl get -n argocd cm argocd-cm -o jsonpath='{.data.users\.anonymous\.enabled}'
If the result of this command is either empty or "false", anonymous access to that instance is not enabled. If the result is "true", your instance is vulnerable.
To disable anonymous access, patch the argocd-cm ConfigMap to either remove the users.anonymous.enabled field or set this field to "false".
To set the field to "false":
$ kubectl patch -n argocd cm argocd-cm --type=json -p='[{"op":"add", "path":"/data/users.anonymous.enabled", "value":"false"}]'
Or you can remove the field completely, thus disabling anonymous access because the default is false:
$ kubectl patch -n argocd cm argocd-cm --type=json -p='[{"op":"remove", "path":"/data/users.anonymous.enabled"}]'
Credits
The Argo CD team would like to thank Mark Pim and Andrzej Hajto, who discovered this vulnerability and reported it in a responsible way to us.
For more information
- Open an issue in the Argo CD issue tracker or discussions
- Join us on Slack in channel #argo-cd
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 | ≥ 2.3.0&&< 2.3.4 | 2.3.4go get github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2@v2.3.4 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 | ≥ 2.2.0&&< 2.2.9 | 2.2.9go get github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2@v2.2.9 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 | all versions | 2.1.15go get github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2@v2.1.15 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/argoproj/argo-cd | all versions | 2.1.15go get github.com/argoproj/argo-cd@v2.1.15 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2 to 2.3.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj 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-r642-gv9p-2wjj can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
The anonymous mode is by default disabled in the ArgoCD instance installed by the Red Hat GitOps operator.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift GitOps 1.3 | openshift-gitops-1/applicationset-rhel8:v1.3.10-1 | RHSA-2022:4671 |
| Red Hat OpenShift GitOps 1.3 | openshift-gitops-1/applicationset-rhel8:v1.3.9-3 | RHSA-2022:4691 |
| Red Hat OpenShift GitOps 1.4 | openshift-gitops-1/applicationset-rhel8:v1.4.7-2 | RHSA-2022:4692 |
| Red Hat OpenShift GitOps 1.5 | openshift-gitops-1/applicationset-rhel8:v1.5.1-4 | RHSA-2022:4690 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-r642-gv9p-2wjj across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.