CVE-2026-18679 Kong Mesh: kuma-dp connects to the control plane without verifying the TLS certificate when no CA is configured
An on-path attacker can intercept authentication tokens and impersonate the control plane to inject forged configurations when TLS verification is disabled.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-18679?
CVE-2026-18679 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Kong Mesh, published on 12 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
When kuma-dp is started against an HTTPS control plane and the operator did not pass a CA certificate, the data plane connects with TLS peer verification disabled, and the dataplane authentication token is sent over that unverified connection.
An on-path actor can intercept the dataplane authentication token and impersonate the control plane to the data plane, injecting a forged bootstrap configuration and taking over the proxy.
Weakness: CWE-295
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-18679?
How do I fix CVE-2026-18679?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-18679 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-18679 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-wc82-hqx6-g35q.