CVE-2024-12401 Cert-manager: potential dos when parsing specially crafted pem inputs
An attacker can cause a denial of service in cert-manager by providing specially crafted PEM data that consumes excessive CPU resources.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2024-12401?
CVE-2024-12401 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat Cryostat 3, published on 12 Dec 2024. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A flaw was found in the cert-manager package. This flaw allows an attacker who can modify PEM data that the cert-manager reads, for example, in a Secret resource, to use large amounts of CPU in the cert-manager controller pod to effectively create a denial-of-service (DoS) vector for the cert-manager in the cluster.
Weakness: CWE-20
Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-12401?
7 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | All versions | 1.12.14, 1.15.4, 1.16.2 |
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | All versions | 1.12.14 |
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | All versions | 1.12.14 |
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | From 1.13.0-alpha.0 | 1.15.4 |
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | From 1.13.0-alpha.0 | 1.15.4 |
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | From 1.16.0-alpha.0 | 1.16.2 |
1 more packages
github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager Go | From 1.16.0-alpha.0 | 1.16.2 |
How do I fix CVE-2024-12401?
Upgrade github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager to a fixed version for your release line: 1.12.14, 1.15.4 or 1.16.2.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2024-12401 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-12401 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-54313, AZL-54324, CLEANSTART-2025-GE42251, CLEANSTART-2025-OY13195, GHSA-r4pg-vg54-wxx4, GO-2024-3282 and 2 more.