CVE-2022-39278 | Istio vulnerable to denial of service attack due to Golang Regex Library

Istio is an open platform-independent service mesh that provides traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. Prior to versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9, the Istio control plane, istiod, is vulnerable to a request processing error, allowing a malicious attacker that sends a specially crafted or oversized message which results in the control plane crashing when the Kubernetes validating or mutating webhook service is exposed publicly. This endpoint is served over TLS port 15017, but does not require any authentication from the attacker. For simple installations, Istiod is typically only reachable from within the cluster, limiting the blast radius. However, for some deployments, especially external istiod topologies, this port is exposed over the public internet. Versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9 contain patches for this issue. There are no effective workarounds, beyond upgrading. This bug is due to an error in `regexp.Compile` in Go.

Published: 2022-10-13 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-39278 is rated Moderate Risk (51.4/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.06%). Mandatory action: Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2022-39278

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.68% 1.06% +0.38%
2 2026-02-01 0.12% 0.68% +0.57%
3 2025-11-21 0.12%

Full EPSS history (11 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2022-39278

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
3.9 3.6 [email protected]
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
3.9 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2022-39278

OS Trackers for CVE-2022-39278

vendor priority summary link
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-39278

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2022-39278

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
istio istio < 1.13.9 cpe:2.3:a:istio:istio:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
istio istio >= 1.14.0, < 1.14.5 cpe:2.3:a:istio:istio:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
istio istio >= 1.15.0, < 1.15.2 cpe:2.3:a:istio:istio:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2022-39278

cvelogic Threat Intelligence