Istio is an open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices. Prior to 1.29.1, 1.28.5, and 1.27.8, a vulnerability in Envoy RBAC header matching could allow authorization policy bypass when policies rely on HTTP headers that may contain multiple values. An attacker could craft requests with multiple header values in a way that causes Envoy to evaluate the header differently than intended, potentially bypassing authorization checks. This may allow unauthorized requests to reach protected services when policies depend on such header-based matching conditions. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.29.1, 1.28.5, and 1.27.8.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-31838 is rated Low Risk (31.9/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.21%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
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 | 0.04% | 0.21% | +0.18% |
| 2 | 2026-03-19 | 0.05% | 0.04% | -0.02% |
| 3 | 2026-03-16 | — | 0.05% | — |
Full EPSS history (4 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.9 | 4.0 | MEDIUM |
|
— | — | [email protected] |
| 5.3 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
3.9 | 1.4 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-31838 |