CVE-2021-25746 - CVE House
Back to Database
Status published High CVE-2021-25746

Ingress-nginx directive injection via annotations

Vulnerability Description

A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where a user that can create or update ingress objects can use .metadata.annotations in an Ingress object (in the networking.k8s.io or extensions API group) to obtain the credentials of the ingress-nginx controller. In the default configuration, that credential has access to all secrets in the cluster.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

THREAT MONITOR

Am I Vulnerable?

Launch our assessment wizard to check if your infrastructure is exposed to • CVE-2021-25746

Credits & Attribution

The following person or organization is credited with identifying this vulnerability, as recorded in the NVD database:

  • Anthony Weems
  • jeffrey&oliver

References

More from Kubernetes

View All →
CVE-2025-9708
Kubernetes C# Client: improper certificate validation in custom CA mode may lead to man-in-the-middle attacks
Medium 6.8
CVE-2025-7445
Kubernetes secrets-store-sync-controller discloses service account tokens in logs
Medium 6.5
CVE-2025-7342
VM images built with Kubernetes Image Builder Nutanix or OVA providers use default credentials for Windows images if user did not override
High 7.5
CVE-2025-5187
Nodes can delete themselves by adding an OwnerReference
Medium 6.7
CVE-2025-4563
Nodes can bypass dynamic resource allocation authorization checks
Low 2.7

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

Kubernetes ingress-nginx
Vulnerable Versions:
unspecified

Timeline

Official Publish: May 6th, 2022
Last Modified: September 17th, 2024
Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

Weaknesses (CWE)

CWE-20

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application
Initial Access
T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter
Execution
T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
Privilege Escalation
T1213 Data from Information Repositories
Collection
T1565.002 Stored Data Manipulation
Impact