Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. Prior to versions 1.26.0, 1.25.3, 1.24.4, 1.23.6, and 1.22.9, escalation of privileges is possible when `failure_mode_allow: true` is configured for `ext_authz` filter. For affected components that are used for logging and/or visibility, requests may not be logged by the receiving service. When Envoy was configured to use ext_authz, ext_proc, tap, ratelimit filters, and grpc access log service and an http header with non-UTF-8 data was received, Envoy would generate an invalid protobuf message and send it to the configured service. The receiving service would typically generate an error when decoding the protobuf message. For ext_authz that was configured with ``failure_mode_allow: true``, the request would have been allowed in this case. For the other services, this could have resulted in other unforeseen errors such as a lack of visibility into requests. As of versions 1.26.0, 1.25.3, 1.24.4, 1.23.6, and 1.22.9, Envoy by default sanitizes the values sent in gRPC service calls to be valid UTF-8, replacing data that is not valid UTF-8 with a `!` character. This behavioral change can be temporarily reverted by setting runtime guard `envoy.reloadable_features.service_sanitize_non_utf8_strings` to false. As a workaround, one may set `failure_mode_allow: false` for `ext_authz`.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-27488 is rated Exploit Available (54.6/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.73%). Core evidence: 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
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 | 0.03% | 0.73% | +0.70% |
| 2 | 2025-03-17 | 0.25% | 0.03% | -0.21% |
| 3 | 2024-09-14 | — | 0.25% | — |
Full EPSS history (6 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.4 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
2.8 | 2.5 | [email protected] |
| 9.8 | 3.1 | CRITICAL |
|
3.9 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
redhat
|
high | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-27488 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| envoyproxy | envoy | < 1.22.9 | cpe:2.3:a:envoyproxy:envoy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| envoyproxy | envoy | >= 1.23.0, < 1.23.6 | cpe:2.3:a:envoyproxy:envoy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| envoyproxy | envoy | >= 1.24.0, < 1.24.4 | cpe:2.3:a:envoyproxy:envoy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| envoyproxy | envoy | >= 1.25.0, < 1.25.3 | cpe:2.3:a:envoyproxy:envoy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/security/advisories/GHSA-9g5w-hqr3-w2ph | Exploit Mitigation Vendor Advisory |