Is this vulnerability remotely exploitable from outside the cluster?

Indirectly. An external attacker typically needs a path to create or modify Ingress resources (for example, via a compromised CI system, exposed deployment automation, or stolen Kubernetes credentials). Once they can influence annotations on an Ingress interpreted by ingress-nginx, they can attempt to exploit the configuration injection behavior.

What level of access is required to exploit this issue?

The attacker must be able to interact with the Kubernetes API in a way that lets them create or update Ingress objects with chosen annotations. In many clusters, this corresponds to namespace-level write or admin permissions for applications, which may be granted to multiple teams or automated systems.

What is the safest general fix pattern for this kind of flaw?

The most robust fix is to ensure annotation values are treated as untrusted, strictly validated, and mapped only to a constrained set of safe configuration options. Avoid mechanisms that let user-controlled data be interpolated directly into low-level NGINX configuration, and separate powerful configuration capabilities from general application-level Ingress definitions.

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) in ingress-nginx Ingress Annotations Enables NGINX Config Injection

CVE-2026-4342

Published:

Mar 19, 2026

Status:

Analyzed

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

NDV

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Vulnerability Type

Category:

Improper Input Validation / Configuration Injection

CWE:

CWE-20

Impact:

Remote Code Execution and Sensitive Data Exposure

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Improper Input Validation / Configuration Injection

CWE:

CWE-20

Impact:

Remote Code Execution and Sensitive Data Exposure

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

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Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) in ingress-nginx Ingress Annotations Enables NGINX Config Injection

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

Recent Vulnerabilities

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(8.6)

Server-Side Request Forgery (CWE-918) in OpenClaw Zalo Plugin sendPhoto

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(8.8)

Authorization Bypass (CWE-863) in OpenClaw Matrix Room Control Commands

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Catch This CVE While Code Is Being Written

Ship clean & secure code faster

Ship clean & secure code faster

Ship clean & secure code faster

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