CVE-2026-18677: medium-severity vulnerability in Kong Mesh
Kong Mesh: a dataplane token without a workload binding can claim any workload's SPIFFE identity
Published · Updated
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13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 6epss 0.6%
In Kong Mesh running in universal mode with a MeshIdentity whose SPIFFE ID path template derives from the dataplane's kuma.io/workload label, the XDS authenticator in kuma-cp validates that label only when the dataplane token is bound to a workload. Workload binding is optional, so a dataplane presenting a tags-bound token can register with kuma.io/workload set to any value and obtain another workload's SPIFFE identity.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Affected products
Kong Inc. · Kong MeshRelated CVEs — Kong Mesh
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2026-18675MEDIUMKong Mesh: control plane denial of service via a malformed dataplane token with a non-string JWT kidEPSS 0.6%CVE-2026-18674HIGHKong Mesh multi-zone: the global control plane attributes KDS-synced resources by an unvalidated in-band zone identifierEPSS 0.6%CVE-2026-18673MEDIUMKong Mesh: the kuma-dp readiness service exposes the Envoy admin API without authenticationEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-18676MEDIUMKong Mesh: default control plane config leaks the admin token cross-origin via a CORS wildcard and localhost adminEPSS 0.3%CVE-2026-18679MEDIUMKong Mesh: kuma-dp connects to the control plane without verifying the TLS certificate when no CA is configuredEPSS 0.2%CVE-2026-18678MEDIUMKong Mesh: kumactl connects to the control plane without verifying the TLS certificate when no CA is configuredEPSS 0.1%