As mitigations to a report from 2019 and CVE-2020-8555, Kubernetes attempts to prevent proxied connections from accessing link-local or localhost networks when making user-driven connections to Services, Pods, Nodes, or StorageClass service providers. As part of this mitigation Kubernetes does a DNS name resolution check and validates that response IPs are not in the link-local (169.254.0.0/16) or localhost (127.0.0.0/8) range. Kubernetes then performs a second DNS resolution without validation for the actual connection. If a non-standard DNS server returns different non-cached responses, a user may be able to bypass the proxy IP restriction and access private networks on the control plane.
A workaround or mitigation is available. Apply it until an official patch is released.
CVSS v4.0 Metrics
Exploitability
Attack VectorNetwork
ComplexityHigh
RequirementsPresent
PrivilegesHigh
User InteractionNone
Threat
Exploit MaturityPoC
Vulnerable System
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityNone
AvailabilityNone
Subsequent System
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityNone
AvailabilityNone
Supplemental
SafetyNegligible
AutomatableYes
RecoveryAutomatic
Value DensityConcentrated
UrgencyMedium
Change Log
| Date | Source | Changes | Score |
|---|
| 2026-07-21 | PoC | E: U→P | 0.5 → 1.2 |
| 2026-07-21 | cve.org | initial, patch: Mitigation | 0.5 |
Affected Software
| Vendor | Product | Version |
|---|
| kubernetes | kubernetes | ≤ 1.18.18 |
| kubernetes | kubernetes | ≥ 1.19.0, < 1.19.10 |
| kubernetes | kubernetes | ≥ 1.20.0, < 1.20.6 |
| Kubernetes | Kubernetes | 0 |
| kubernetes | kubernetes | 1.21.0 |
Published: 2022-02-01