CVE-2026-16543

HIGH

Kong Operator cluster-wide ingress configuration DoS via embedded KIC CA-certificate ID collision

Title source: cna

Description

Kong Operator's embedded Kong Kubernetes Ingress Controller (KIC) allows a user with namespace-scoped Secret creation privileges to cause a cluster-wide ingress configuration denial of service. The embedded KIC collects CA-certificate Secrets across all watched namespaces using a label selector alone, without ingress-class or namespace restrictions. The CA-certificate primary key is derived from a user-supplied field in the Secret. Duplicate CA-certificate IDs cause Kong Gateway to reject the entire configuration document and halting all ingress changes cluster-wide.

References (1)

Core 1

Core References

https://github.com/Kong/kong-operator/security/advisories/GHSA-h4fh-j7xg-vwcx

Scores

CVSS v4 7.1

EPSS 0.0014

EPSS Percentile 3.8%

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment

Exploitation none

Automatable no

Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE

CWE-400 CWE-862

Status published

Published Jul 29, 2026

Tracked Since Jul 29, 2026