CVE-2021-20198

Description

A flaw was found in the OpenShift Installer. During installation of OpenShift Container Platform 4 clusters, bootstrap nodes are provisioned with anonymous authentication enabled on kubelet port 10250. A remote attacker able to reach this port during installation can make unauthenticated /exec requests to execute arbitrary commands within running containers. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

Mitigation

This issue is mitigated by default on AWS, Azure, GCP and OpenStack as port 10250 is not remotely accessible on bootstrap nodes. For other IPI platforms, bootstrap nodes only exist during the installation window so the exposure is limited. For UPI installations, administrators should prevent remote access to this port on bootstrap nodes and/or remove the nodes once installation is complete

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score8.18.1N/A
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkN/A
Attack ComplexityHighHighN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityHighHighN/A
Integrity ImpactHighHighN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Access Control,Other

Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Varies by Context

Exposing critical functionality essentially provides an attacker with the privilege level of that functionality. The consequences will depend on the associated functionality, but they can range from reading or modifying sensitive data, accessing administrative or other privileged functionality, or possibly even executing arbitrary code.

Frequently Asked Questions

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