CVE-2023-35165 - CVE House
Back to Database
Status published Medium CVE-2023-35165

AWS CDK EKS overly permissive trust policies

Vulnerability Description

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open-source software development framework to define cloud infrastructure in code and provision it through AWS CloudFormation. In the packages `aws-cdk-lib` 2.0.0 until 2.80.0 and `@aws-cdk/aws-eks` 1.57.0 until 1.202.0, `eks.Cluster` and `eks.FargateCluster` constructs create two roles, `CreationRole` and `default MastersRole`, that have an overly permissive trust policy. The first, referred to as the `CreationRole`, is used by lambda handlers to create the cluster and deploy Kubernetes resources (e.g `KubernetesManifest`, `HelmChart`, ...) onto it. Users with CDK version higher or equal to 1.62.0 (including v2 users) may be affected. The second, referred to as the `default MastersRole`, is provisioned only if the `mastersRole` property isn't provided and has permissions to execute `kubectl` commands on the cluster. Users with CDK version higher or equal to 1.57.0 (including v2 users) may be affected. The issue has been fixed in `@aws-cdk/aws-eks` v1.202.0 and `aws-cdk-lib` v2.80.0. These versions no longer use the account root principal. Instead, they restrict the trust policy to the specific roles of lambda handlers that need it. There is no workaround available for CreationRole. To avoid creating the `default MastersRole`, use the `mastersRole` property to explicitly provide a role.

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-2023-35165

Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

aws-cdk
Vulnerable Versions:
aws-cdk-lib >= 2.0.0, < 2.80.0, @aws-cdk/aws-eks >= 1.57.0, < 1.202.0

Timeline

Official Publish: June 23rd, 2023
Last Modified: December 5th, 2024
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

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

Weaknesses (CWE)