Ingress nginx annotation injection causes arbitrary command execution

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

7.6 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

EPSS

• CVE-2023-5043: 2.49% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 84.66 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Issue Details A security issue was identified in ingress-nginx where the nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/configuration-snippet annotation on an Ingress object (in the networking.k8s.io or extensions API group) can be used to inject arbitrary commands, and obtain the credentials of the ingress-nginx controller. In the default configuration, that credential has access to all secrets in the cluster. This issue has been rated High (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L), and assigned CVE-2023-5043. Affected Components and Configurations This bug affects ingress-nginx. If you do not have ingress-nginx installed on your cluster, you are not affected. You can check this by running kubectl get po -n ingress-nginx. If you are running the “chrooted” ingress-nginx controller introduced in v1.2.0 (gcr.io/k8s-staging-ingress-nginx/controller-chroot), command execution is possible but credential extraction is not, so the High severity does not apply. Multi-tenant environments where non-admin…

Published by the source

25 Oct 2023, 21:30 UTC

Last modified by the source

13 Feb 2025, 19:18 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:08 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2023-5043

Advisory: Ingress nginx annotation injection causes arbitrary command execution
IDs: CVE-2023-5043, GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2023-5043 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:08 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: High (CVSS 7.6)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: k8s.io/ingress-nginx 1.9.0. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go k8s.io/ingress-nginx: affected < 1.9.0; fixed in 1.9.0

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go k8s.io/ingress-nginx: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on k8s.io/ingress-nginx.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-5wj4-wffq-3378 lists affected ranges: Go k8s.io/ingress-nginx >=0 <1.9.0)

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