# CVE-2022-39278: Istio vulnerable to denial of service attack due to Golang Regex Library

> Attackers can crash the Istio control plane by sending oversized messages to the webhook service if it is exposed publicly.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 13 Oct 2022
- **Updated:** 23 Apr 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-86vr-4wcv-mm9w

## What is CVE-2022-39278?

CVE-2022-39278 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in istio, published on 13 Oct 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Istio is an open platform-independent service mesh that provides traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. Prior to versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9, the Istio control plane, istiod, is vulnerable to a request processing error, allowing a malicious attacker that sends a specially crafted or oversized message which results in the control plane crashing when the Kubernetes validating or mutating webhook service is exposed publicly. This endpoint is served over TLS port 15017, but does not require any authentication from the attacker. For simple installations, Istiod is typically only reachable from within the cluster, limiting the blast radius. However, for some deployments, especially external istiod topologies, this port is exposed over the public internet. Versions 1.15.2, 1.14.5, and 1.13.9 contain patches for this issue. There are no effective workarounds, beyond upgrading. This bug is due to an error in `regexp.Compile` in Go.

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-39278?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Istio Istio.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-39278?

No fix has been published for CVE-2022-39278 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2022-39278 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-39278 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in istio

- [CVE-2021-31921](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-31921/): Missing authorization in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2021-34824](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-34824/): Information disclosure in n/a (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2026-31837](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-31837/): Istio JWKS resolver to prevent private key material from being exposed when JWKS fetch fails. (high 8.7)
- [CVE-2021-39155](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-39155/): Authorization Policy Bypass Due to Case Insensitive Host Comparison (high 8.3)
- [CVE-2021-39156](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-39156/): Fragments in Path May Lead to Authorization Policy Bypass (high 8.1)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-39278 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-39278 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in istio, published on 13 Oct 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-39278 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: istio. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-39278/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-39278/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-39278
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-39278
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-39278

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-39278/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.