Kubernetes
By Cloud Native Computing Foundation Bug bounty on HackerOne kubernetes.io
Accepting reports
Full safe harbor
- Top reward
- $10,000
- Top severity paid
- Critical
- Assets in scope
- 82
- Public CVEs
- 60
- Last change
- No changes yet
At a glance
What to know before you start testing.
- Pays up to $10,000
- for critical bugs.
- Report on HackerOne
- Submit through the program page.
- Full safe harbor
- Good-faith research is authorised; no legal action.
- Replies within 1 day
- As the policy promises.
- Publish after a fix
- Coordinate the timing with the company.
Rewards
What HackerOne lists as the payout for each severity.
| Severity | Relative size | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Critical |
|
$10,000 |
| High |
|
$5,000 |
| Medium |
|
$1,000 |
| Low |
|
$200 |
- Response
-
Within 1 days
Time to first response (from report submitted) - 1 business day
- Safe harbor
-
Full
Any activities conducted in a manner consistent with this policy will be considered authorized conduct and we will not initiate legal action against you **under applicable computer use laws on the basis of such activities**.
Summarised with AI from the program policy on HackerOne, read 12 Nov 2026, and checked word for word against it. Read the original
Scope
82 assets you may test, 2 excluded.
Source code 72
- github.com/kubernetes-csi Critical
- github.com/kubernetes-retired Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/api Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/apiextensions-apiserver Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/apimachinery Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/apiserver Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/autoscaler Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes-client Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/client-go Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cli-runtime Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-alibaba-cloud Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-aws Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-azure Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-gcp Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-openstack Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-sample Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-vsphere Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cluster-bootstrap Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cluster-registry Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/code-generator Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/community Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/component-base Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/cri-api Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/csi-api Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/csi-translation-lib Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/dns Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/examples Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/frakti Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/funding Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/gengo Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/git-sync Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/klog Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kops Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubeadm Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-aggregator Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-controller-manager Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-deploy Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubelet Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-openapi Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-proxy Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes-anywhere Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes-template-project Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-scheduler Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-state-metrics Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/legacy-cloud-providers Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/metrics Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/node-api Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/node-problem-detector Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/org Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/perf-tests Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/publishing-bot Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/release Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/repo-infra Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/sample-apiserver Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/sample-cli-plugin Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/sample-controller Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes-security Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/security Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/steering Critical No bounty
- https://github.com/kubernetes/test-infra Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/utils Critical
- https://github.com/kubernetes/website Critical
Web 4
- k8s.io Critical
- kubernetes-csi.github.io Critical
- kubernetes.io Critical
- prow.k8s.io Critical
Products and areas 6
- Community Management & Communications Critical No bounty
- https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/ Critical
- k8s.gcr.io Critical
- Tier 1 Critical
- Tier 2 Critical
- Tier 3 Critical
Out of scope (2)
- https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-gce
- https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx
Rules
What the policy asks of you, and the bug types it won't reward, quoted from Kubernetes (via HackerOne)'s policy. "We" in these lines means the program, not this site.
While testing
-
Please provide detailed reports with reproducible steps. If the report is not detailed enough to reproduce the issue, the issue will not be eligible for a reward.
-
Submit one vulnerability per report, unless you need to chain vulnerabilities to provide impact.
-
When duplicates occur, we only award the first report that was received (provided that it can be fully reproduced).
-
Multiple vulnerabilities caused by one underlying issue will be awarded one bounty.
-
Social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing, smishing) is prohibited.
-
Please limit security scanner QPS against kubernetes domains to 5 QPS
Not accepted
-
Kubernetes running on Windows or other non-Linux operating systems
-
Non-Kubernetes binaries distributed as cluster addons
-
Container escalations and escapes to the host, unless the attack path traverses a Kubernetes process (e.g. kubelet).
-
Attacks against containers from the host they are running on
-
Attacks relying on or against deprecated components (e.g. gitrepo volumes)
-
Broken link hijacking to 3rd party content in Kubernetes documentation.
-
Community management tooling - Including email lists, Google docs, community meetings, slack channels, etc.
-
configuration disclosures
-
path disclosures
Summarised with AI from the program policy on HackerOne, read 12 Nov 2026, and checked word for word against it. Read the original
Changes
Tracked since 11 Nov 2026. Last checked 1 hour ago.
No changes yet. When the rewards or scope move, you will see it here and in the RSS feed.
Public CVEs
Published vulnerabilities in this vendor's products, from the NVD.
| CVE | Summary | Severity | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-13020 | A Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten Password exists in Esri Portal for ArcGIS versions 12.1 and earlier on Windows, Linux and Kubernetes. A remote, unauthorized attacker may assume ownership of a user’s account by manipulating this mechanism. ArcGIS Administrators should configure an email server with ArcGIS Enterprise to facilitate user self-service password recovery. The ability for | High 8.1 | 7 Jul 2026 |
| CVE-2026-13019 | Esri Portal for ArcGIS versions 12.1 and earlier on Windows, Linux and Kubernetes have a missing authentication for critical function vulnerability allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to access an unprotected API. The following versions are known to be affected: Portal for ArcGIS 12.1 and earlier. Other unsupported versions may also be affected. Esri recommends that users apply the Portal fo | Critical 9.8 | 7 Jul 2026 |
| CVE-2026-33519 | An incorrect authorization vulnerability exists in Esri Portal for ArcGIS 11.4, 11.5 and 12.0 on Windows, Linux and Kubernetes that did not correctly check permissions assigned to developer credentials. | Critical 9.8 | 21 Apr 2026 |
| CVE-2026-4342 | A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where a combination of Ingress annotations can be used to inject configuration into nginx. This can lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller, and disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets cluster-wide.) | High 8.8 | 19 Mar 2026 |
| CVE-2026-3288 | A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where the `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target` Ingress annotation can be used to inject configuration into nginx. This can lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller, and disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets clust | High 8.8 | 9 Mar 2026 |
| CVE-2026-22549 | A vulnerability exists in F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services that may allow excessive permissions to read cluster secrets. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated. | Medium 6.9 | 4 Feb 2026 |
| CVE-2025-57870 | A SQL Injection vulnerability exists in Esri ArcGIS Server versions 11.3, 11.4 and 11.5 on Windows, Linux and Kubernetes. This vulnerability allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary SQL commands via a specific ArcGIS Feature Service operation. Successful exploitation can potentially result in unauthorized access, modification, or deletion of data from the underlying Enterpris | Critical 10.0 | 22 Oct 2025 |
| CVE-2024-5154 | A flaw was found in cri-o. A malicious container can create a symbolic link to arbitrary files on the host via directory traversal (“../“). This flaw allows the container to read and write to arbitrary files on the host system. | High 8.1 | 12 Jun 2024 |
| CVE-2023-5528 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods and persistent volumes on Windows nodes may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if they are using an in-tree storage plugin for Windows nodes. | High 7.2 | 14 Nov 2023 |
| CVE-2022-3172 | A security issue was discovered in kube-apiserver that allows an aggregated API server to redirect client traffic to any URL. This could lead to the client performing unexpected actions as well as forwarding the client's API server credentials to third parties. | Medium 5.1 | 3 Nov 2023 |
| CVE-2023-3893 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods on Windows nodes running kubernetes-csi-proxy may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if they include Windows nodes running kubernetes-csi-proxy. | High 8.8 | 3 Nov 2023 |
| CVE-2023-3676 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods on Windows nodes may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if they include Windows nodes. | High 8.8 | 31 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2023-3955 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user that can create pods on Windows nodes may be able to escalate to admin privileges on those nodes. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if they include Windows nodes. | High 8.8 | 31 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2021-25736 | Kube-proxy on Windows can unintentionally forward traffic to local processes listening on the same port (“spec.ports[*].port”) as a LoadBalancer Service when the LoadBalancer controller does not set the “status.loadBalancer.ingress[].ip” field. Clusters where the LoadBalancer controller sets the “status.loadBalancer.ingress[].ip” field are unaffected. | Medium 5.8 | 30 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2023-5043 | Ingress nginx annotation injection causes arbitrary command execution. | High 7.6 | 25 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2023-5044 | Code injection via nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/permanent-redirect annotation. | High 7.6 | 25 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2022-4886 | Ingress-nginx `path` sanitization can be bypassed with `log_format` directive. | High 8.8 | 25 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2023-1943 | Privilege Escalation in kOps using GCE/GCP Provider in Gossip Mode. | High 8.0 | 12 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2022-4318 | A vulnerability was found in cri-o. This issue allows the addition of arbitrary lines into /etc/passwd by use of a specially crafted environment variable. | High 7.8 | 25 Sep 2023 |
| CVE-2023-1260 | An authentication bypass vulnerability was discovered in kube-apiserver. This issue could allow a remote, authenticated attacker who has been given permissions "update, patch" the "pods/ephemeralcontainers" subresource beyond what the default is. They would then need to create a new pod or patch one that they already have access to. This might allow evasion of SCC admission restrictions, thereby g | High 8.0 | 24 Sep 2023 |
| CVE-2022-3466 | The version of cri-o as released for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.9.48, 4.10.31, and 4.11.6 via RHBA-2022:6316, RHBA-2022:6257, and RHBA-2022:6658, respectively, included an incorrect version of cri-o missing the fix for CVE-2022-27652, which was previously fixed in OCP 4.9.41 and 4.10.12 via RHBA-2022:5433 and RHSA-2022:1600. This issue could allow an attacker with access to programs wi | Medium 4.8 | 15 Sep 2023 |
| CVE-2023-2728 | Users may be able to launch containers that bypass the mountable secrets policy enforced by the ServiceAccount admission plugin when using ephemeral containers. The policy ensures pods running with a service account may only reference secrets specified in the service account’s secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce | Medium 6.5 | 3 Jul 2023 |
| CVE-2023-2727 | Users may be able to launch containers using images that are restricted by ImagePolicyWebhook when using ephemeral containers. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ImagePolicyWebhook admission plugin is used together with ephemeral containers. | Medium 6.5 | 3 Jul 2023 |
| CVE-2023-2431 | A security issue was discovered in Kubelet that allows pods to bypass the seccomp profile enforcement. Pods that use localhost type for seccomp profile but specify an empty profile field, are affected by this issue. In this scenario, this vulnerability allows the pod to run in unconfined (seccomp disabled) mode. This bug affects Kubelet. | Low 3.4 | 16 Jun 2023 |
| CVE-2023-2878 | Kubernetes secrets-store-csi-driver in versions before 1.3.3 discloses service account tokens in logs. | Medium 6.5 | 7 Jun 2023 |
| CVE-2023-1944 | This vulnerability enables ssh access to minikube container using a default password. | High 8.4 | 24 May 2023 |
| CVE-2023-1174 | This vulnerability exposes a network port in minikube running on macOS with Docker driver that could enable unexpected remote access to the minikube container. | Critical 9.8 | 24 May 2023 |
| CVE-2021-25749 | Windows workloads can run as ContainerAdministrator even when those workloads set the runAsNonRoot option to true. | High 7.8 | 24 May 2023 |
| CVE-2021-25748 | A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where a user that can create or update ingress objects can use a newline character to bypass the sanitization of the `spec.rules[].http.paths[].path` field of 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 | High 7.6 | 24 May 2023 |
| CVE-2022-3294 | Users may have access to secure endpoints in the control plane network. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if an untrusted user can modify Node objects and send proxy requests to them. Kubernetes supports node proxying, which allows clients of kube-apiserver to access endpoints of a Kubelet to establish connections to Pods, retrieve container logs, and more. While Kubernetes already validates t | Medium 6.6 | 1 Mar 2023 |
| CVE-2022-3162 | Users authorized to list or watch one type of namespaced custom resource cluster-wide can read custom resources of a different type in the same API group without authorization. Clusters are impacted by this vulnerability if all of the following are true: 1. There are 2+ CustomResourceDefinitions sharing the same API group 2. Users have cluster-wide list or watch authorization on one of those custo | Medium 6.5 | 1 Mar 2023 |
| CVE-2022-2995 | Incorrect handling of the supplementary groups in the CRI-O container engine might lead to sensitive information disclosure or possible data modification if an attacker has direct access to the affected container where supplementary groups are used to set access permissions and is able to execute a binary code in that container. | High 7.1 | 19 Sep 2022 |
| CVE-2022-2385 | A security issue was discovered in aws-iam-authenticator where an allow-listed IAM identity may be able to modify their username and escalate privileges. | High 8.1 | 12 Jul 2022 |
| CVE-2022-1708 | A vulnerability was found in CRI-O that causes memory or disk space exhaustion on the node for anyone with access to the Kube API. The ExecSync request runs commands in a container and logs the output of the command. This output is then read by CRI-O after command execution, and it is read in a manner where the entire file corresponding to the output of the command is read in. Thus, if the output | High 7.5 | 7 Jun 2022 |
| CVE-2021-25746 | 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. | High 7.6 | 6 May 2022 |
| CVE-2021-25745 | A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where a user that can create or update ingress objects can use the spec.rules[].http.paths[].path field of 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. | High 7.6 | 6 May 2022 |
| CVE-2022-27652 | A flaw was found in cri-o, where containers were incorrectly started with non-empty default permissions. A vulnerability was found in Moby (Docker Engine) where containers started incorrectly with non-empty inheritable Linux process capabilities. This flaw allows an attacker with access to programs with inheritable file capabilities to elevate those capabilities to the permitted set when execve(2) | Medium 5.3 | 18 Apr 2022 |
| CVE-2022-0811 | A flaw was found in CRI-O in the way it set kernel options for a pod. This issue allows anyone with rights to deploy a pod on a Kubernetes cluster that uses the CRI-O runtime to achieve a container escape and arbitrary code execution as root on the cluster node, where the malicious pod was deployed. | High 8.8 | 16 Mar 2022 |
| CVE-2022-0532 | An incorrect sysctls validation vulnerability was found in CRI-O 1.18 and earlier. The sysctls from the list of "safe" sysctls specified for the cluster will be applied to the host if an attacker is able to create a pod with a hostIPC and hostNetwork kernel namespace. | Medium 4.2 | 9 Feb 2022 |
| CVE-2020-8562 | 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 | Low 2.2 | 1 Feb 2022 |
| CVE-2021-25743 | kubectl does not neutralize escape, meta or control sequences contained in the raw data it outputs to a terminal. This includes but is not limited to the unstructured string fields in objects such as Events. | Low 3.0 | 7 Jan 2022 |
| CVE-2021-25742 | A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx where a user that can create or update ingress objects can use the custom snippets feature to obtain all secrets in the cluster. | High 7.6 | 29 Oct 2021 |
| CVE-2021-25738 | Loading specially-crafted yaml with the Kubernetes Java Client library can lead to code execution. | Medium 6.7 | 11 Oct 2021 |
| CVE-2021-25740 | A security issue was discovered with Kubernetes that could enable users to send network traffic to locations they would otherwise not have access to via a confused deputy attack. | Low 3.1 | 20 Sep 2021 |
| CVE-2021-25741 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user may be able to create a container with subpath volume mounts to access files & directories outside of the volume, including on the host filesystem. | High 8.8 | 20 Sep 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8561 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where actors that control the responses of MutatingWebhookConfiguration or ValidatingWebhookConfiguration requests are able to redirect kube-apiserver requests to private networks of the apiserver. If that user can view kube-apiserver logs when the log level is set to 10, they can view the redirected responses and headers in the logs. | Medium 4.1 | 20 Sep 2021 |
| CVE-2021-25737 | A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where a user may be able to redirect pod traffic to private networks on a Node. Kubernetes already prevents creation of Endpoint IPs in the localhost or link-local range, but the same validation was not performed on EndpointSlice IPs. | Low 2.7 | 6 Sep 2021 |
| CVE-2021-25735 | A security issue was discovered in kube-apiserver that could allow node updates to bypass a Validating Admission Webhook. Clusters are only affected by this vulnerability if they run a Validating Admission Webhook for Nodes that denies admission based at least partially on the old state of the Node object. Validating Admission Webhook does not observe some previous fields. | Medium 6.5 | 6 Sep 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8568 | Kubernetes Secrets Store CSI Driver versions v0.0.15 and v0.0.16 allow an attacker who can modify a SecretProviderClassPodStatus/Status resource the ability to write content to the host filesystem and sync file contents to Kubernetes Secrets. This includes paths under var/lib/kubelet/pods that contain other Kubernetes Secrets. | Medium 5.8 | 21 Jan 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8570 | Kubernetes Java client libraries in version 10.0.0 and versions prior to 9.0.1 allow writes to paths outside of the current directory when copying multiple files from a remote pod which sends a maliciously crafted archive. This can potentially overwrite any files on the system of the process executing the client code. | Critical 9.1 | 21 Jan 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8569 | Kubernetes CSI snapshot-controller prior to v2.1.3 and v3.0.2 could panic when processing a VolumeSnapshot custom resource when: - The VolumeSnapshot referenced a non-existing PersistentVolumeClaim and the VolumeSnapshot did not reference any VolumeSnapshotClass. - The snapshot-controller crashes, is automatically restarted by Kubernetes, and processes the same VolumeSnapshot custom resource after | Medium 4.3 | 21 Jan 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8554 | Kubernetes API server in all versions allow an attacker who is able to create a ClusterIP service and set the spec.externalIPs field, to intercept traffic to that IP address. Additionally, an attacker who is able to patch the status (which is considered a privileged operation and should not typically be granted to users) of a LoadBalancer service can set the status.loadBalancer.ingress.ip to simil | Medium 6.3 | 21 Jan 2021 |
| CVE-2020-8564 | In Kubernetes clusters using a logging level of at least 4, processing a malformed docker config file will result in the contents of the docker config file being leaked, which can include pull secrets or other registry credentials. This affects < v1.19.3, < v1.18.10, < v1.17.13. | Medium 4.7 | 7 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8566 | In Kubernetes clusters using Ceph RBD as a storage provisioner, with logging level of at least 4, Ceph RBD admin secrets can be written to logs. This occurs in kube-controller-manager's logs during provisioning of Ceph RBD persistent claims. This affects < v1.19.3, < v1.18.10, < v1.17.13. | Medium 4.7 | 7 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8565 | In Kubernetes, if the logging level is set to at least 9, authorization and bearer tokens will be written to log files. This can occur both in API server logs and client tool output like kubectl. This affects <= v1.19.3, <= v1.18.10, <= v1.17.13, < v1.20.0-alpha2. | Medium 4.7 | 7 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8563 | In Kubernetes clusters using VSphere as a cloud provider, with a logging level set to 4 or above, VSphere cloud credentials will be leaked in the cloud controller manager's log. This affects < v1.19.3. | Medium 4.7 | 7 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8553 | The Kubernetes ingress-nginx component prior to version 0.28.0 allows a user with the ability to create namespaces and to read and create ingress objects to overwrite the password file of another ingress which uses nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-type: basic and which has a hyphenated namespace or secret name. | Medium 5.9 | 29 Jul 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8558 | The Kubelet and kube-proxy components in versions 1.1.0-1.16.10, 1.17.0-1.17.6, and 1.18.0-1.18.3 were found to contain a security issue which allows adjacent hosts to reach TCP and UDP services bound to 127.0.0.1 running on the node or in the node's network namespace. Such a service is generally thought to be reachable only by other processes on the same host, but due to this defeect, could be re | Medium 5.4 | 27 Jul 2020 |
| CVE-2020-8557 | The Kubernetes kubelet component in versions 1.1-1.16.12, 1.17.0-1.17.8 and 1.18.0-1.18.5 do not account for disk usage by a pod which writes to its own /etc/hosts file. The /etc/hosts file mounted in a pod by kubelet is not included by the kubelet eviction manager when calculating ephemeral storage usage by a pod. If a pod writes a large amount of data to the /etc/hosts file, it could fill the st | Medium 5.5 | 23 Jul 2020 |
| CVE-2019-11252 | The Kubernetes kube-controller-manager in versions v1.0-v1.17 is vulnerable to a credential leakage via error messages in mount failure logs and events for AzureFile and CephFS volumes. | Medium 5.9 | 23 Jul 2020 |
Original policy
Copied from hackerone.com on 12 Nov 2026. The summaries on this page are made from it; the live page may have changed since.
We’re incredibly grateful for security researchers and users that report vulnerabilities to the Kubernetes Open Source Community. All reports are thoroughly investigated by a set of community volunteers.
Response Targets
Cloud Native Computing Foundation will make a best effort to meet the following response targets for hackers participating in our program:
- Time to first response (from report submitted) - 1 business day
- Time to triage (from report submitted) - 10 business days
- Time to bounty (from triage) - 10 business days
We’ll try to keep you informed about our progress throughout the process.
Disclosure Policy
- A public disclosure date is negotiated by the Kubernetes Security Response Committee and the bug submitter. We prefer to fully disclose the bug as soon as possible once user mitigation is available. It is reasonable to delay disclosure when the bug or the fix is not yet fully understood, the solution is not well-tested, or for vendor coordination. The timeframe for disclosure is very dependent on the context of the bug and varies from immediate for publicly known issues to months for bugs requiring breaking changes.
Program Rules
- https://github.com/kubernetes/security/blob/master/security-release-process.md
- Please provide detailed reports with reproducible steps. If the report is not detailed enough to reproduce the issue, the issue will not be eligible for a reward.
- Submit one vulnerability per report, unless you need to chain vulnerabilities to provide impact.
- When duplicates occur, we only award the first report that was received (provided that it can be fully reproduced).
- Multiple vulnerabilities caused by one underlying issue will be awarded one bounty.
- Social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing, smishing) is prohibited.
- Make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of live user production services. Only interact with accounts you own or with the explicit permission of the account holder.
- Please limit security scanner QPS against kubernetes domains to 5 QPS
When Should I Report a Vulnerability?
- You think you discovered a potential security vulnerability in Kubernetes
- You are unsure how a vulnerability affects Kubernetes
When Should I NOT Report a Vulnerability?
- You need help tuning Kubernetes components for security
- You need help applying security-related updates
- Your issue is not security-related
If you think you discovered a vulnerability in another project that Kubernetes depends on, and that project has their own vulnerability reporting and disclosure process, please report it directly there.
Severity Thresholds - How We Do Vulnerability Scoring
For details, please refer to the Github Kubernetes Security Release
Rewards
Our rewards are based on severity per CVSS (the Common Vulnerability Scoring Standard). Please note these are general guidelines, and reward decisions are up to the discretion of Cloud Native Computing Foundation and adjustments to the Severity Thresholds described below. kubectl vulnerabilities requiring user-interaction will be awarded at a lower-tier (e.g. a critical will be awarded as a high).
Reward Eligibility
The following groups of people are ineligible for awards but may still submit reports if the conflict is mentioned within the report:
- CNCF staff
- Kubernetes Security Response Committee and associates
- HackerOne’s program team
- Project maintainers, for the vulnerable (sub)project
- Authors & reviewers of the vulnerable code
Tier 1: Core Kubernetes
Tier 1 includes:
- GA & Beta features of core Kubernetes (e.g. k8s.io/kubernetes & staging) or Kubernetes-owned core dependencies (e.g. k8s.io/klog), as well as core addons (kube-proxy)
- The ability to alter source code without OWNER approval, or modify release artifacts.
- DoS attacks on release artifacts, including k8s.gcr.io, dl.k8s.io, and packages.k8s.io
Tier 2:
Tier 2 includes:
- GA & Beta features of non-core GA components (e.g. CSI drivers, kube-adm)
Tier 3:
Tier 3 includes:
- Kubernetes infrastructure (e.g. k8s.io, prow, documentation) Note: Kubernetes infrastructure compromise leading to code/artifact modification falls under Tier 1.
- Alpha features of core Kubernetes
#Getting Started We've included a few links for anyone who would like an overview of Kubernetes.
Hardening guides
Frameworks
- CIS benchmarks: https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/kubernetes/
- NIST 800-190: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-190.pdf
Talks
- Shipping in pirate-infested waters (KubeCon NA 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohTq0no0ZVU
- Hacking and Hardening Kubernetes clusters by example (KubeCon NA 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTgQLzeBfRU
- Securing Kubernetes (BSidesSF 2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BER8uridVIs
- Kubernetes Practical Attack and Defense (BlueHat Seattle 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmP9Rcn5fZo
Training
- Kubernetes Acadamy: https://kubernetes.academy
Scope
Cluster Attacks:
Attacks against Beta & GA features unless explicitly excluded below
- Privilege escalation due to bugs in RBAC, ABAC, pod security policies
- Authentication bugs in the in-tree authentication handlers
- Including: OIDC, x509 certificates, service accounts, webhook authenticator, bearer token, etc.
- Privilege escalation through the kubelet APIs
- Remote code execution in kubelet, api server
- Unauthorized etcd access via the Kubernetes API
- Path traversal attacks in API, namespaces, etcd
- Info leak (e.g. workload names) from publicly accessible unauthenticated endpoints
- Excluding intentionally disclosed info, such as Kubernetes version & enabled APIs
- Reliable suppression of audit logs for privileged actions
- Unexpected editing, removal, or permission changes of files on the host filesystems from Kubernetes components (e.g. kubelet)
- Persistent DoS from within a cluster by an unprivileged container or user.
Supply Chain: (excluding social engineering attacks against maintainers)
- Unauthorized code commit to any Kubernetes org repository
- Including: github.com/kubernetes{,-client,-csi,-incubator,-retired,-security,-sigs}/*
- Unauthorized access to github.com/kubernetes-security
- Publishing of unauthorized artifacts
- Unauthorized modification of github data
- CI/CD Credential Leaks
- Execution inside the CI/CD infrastructure
- Unauthorized push, update or delete of container images in any kubernetes-owned repository
- Including: k8s.gcr.io, gcr.io/kubernetes-ci-images
Components:
- Attacks against a stable & supported Kubernetes release (most recent 3 releases)
- Community maintained stable cloud platform plugins
- Vulnerabilities in other cloud platform plugins should be reported through the associated provider
- In-tree (k8s.io/kubernetes) stable volume plugins
In scope but not eligible for bounty
The following items are but not eligible for rewards. While we still welcome vulnerability reports in these areas, they are not (currently) eligible to receive a bounty.
- Kubernetes running on Windows or other non-Linux operating systems
- Non-Kubernetes binaries distributed as cluster addons
- Please report vulnerabilities in these components through the appropriate channel for the upstream component
- Container escalations and escapes to the host, unless the attack path traverses a Kubernetes process (e.g. kubelet).
- Attacks against containers from the host they are running on
- Attacks relying on insecure configurations (subject to the Security Response Committee's opinion), such as clusters not utilizing mutual authentication or encryption between Kubernetes components.
- Attacks relying on or against deprecated components (e.g. gitrepo volumes)
- Broken link hijacking to 3rd party content in Kubernetes documentation.
- Community management tooling - Including email lists, Google docs, community meetings, slack channels, etc.
- Exceptions: reading messages in *[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
- Kubernetes is a community run open source project. Most of our communications and plans are public, and we welcome anyone to join the conversations.
- Email spoofing protections are known 1 2, and we've chosen to stick with the current configuration.
Out of scope - please report to the corresponding project directly
- Vulnerabilities in etcd
- Please report these through etcd's disclosure process
- Vulnerabilities in CoreDNS
- Please report these through CoreDNS's disclosure process
- Vulnerabilities specific to a hosted Kubernetes setup
- Please report these through the associated provider
- Vulnerabilities in hosted vendor tools, including Google docs, Slack, Discourse, Zoom
- Please report these to the vendor directly.
- Linux Vulnerabilities
- Please report these through [email protected]
- Vulnerabilities in ingress and gateway controllers
- High quality reports may be rewarded with a bonus on a case by case basis
Miscellaneous notes:
- Much of our infrastructure is managed in public through GitOps and declarative config. As such, configuration disclosures and path disclosures are typically not considered vulnerabilities.
- If reporting one of these issues, please include proof of credential leakage, or demonstrate an attack with the leaked information.
- We have some dummy credentials in test data. Such values should typically have a comment indicating that they are not sensitive. When reporting leaked credentials, please check to ensure it's not just test data.
- Our community is very open, and most calendars (including Zoom PINs), mailing lists, meeting notes and other administrative resources are intended to be public. Exceptions: *[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Safe Harbor
Any activities conducted in a manner consistent with this policy will be considered authorized conduct and we will not initiate legal action against you under applicable computer use laws on the basis of such activities. We cannot bind or authorize any activities taken in relation to networks, systems, information, applications, products, or services of any third parties. If legal action is initiated by a third party against you in connection with activities conducted under this policy, we will take steps to make it known that your actions were conducted in compliance with this policy.
Thank you for helping keep Cloud Native Computing Foundation and our users safe!