Vulnerability Monitor

The vendors, products, and vulnerabilities you care about

CVE-2021-20238


It was found in OpenShift Container Platform 4 that ignition config, served by the Machine Config Server, can be accessed externally from clusters without authentication. The MCS endpoint (port 22623) provides ignition configuration used for bootstrapping Nodes and can include some sensitive data, e.g. registry pull secrets. There are two scenarios where this data can be accessed. The first is on Baremetal, OpenStack, Ovirt, Vsphere and KubeVirt deployments which do not have a separate internal API endpoint and allow access from outside the cluster to port 22623 from the standard OpenShift API Virtual IP address. The second is on cloud deployments when using unsupported network plugins, which do not create iptables rules that prevent to port 22623. In this scenario, the ignition config is exposed to all pods within the cluster and cannot be accessed externally.


Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a LOW severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 3.7, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network but requires specific conditions to be met without requiring user interaction and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts limited data confidentiality, for affected systems. Impacting 2 products from redhat, from redhat organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

Reported in 2022, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.


Published

2022-04-01T23:15:08.727

Last Modified

2024-11-21T05:46:11.590

Status

Modified

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.1: 3.7 (LOW)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

  • Access Vector: NETWORK
  • Access Complexity: MEDIUM
  • Authentication: NONE
  • Confidentiality Impact: PARTIAL
  • Integrity Impact: NONE
  • Availability Impact: NONE
Exploitability Score

8.6

Impact Score

2.9

Weaknesses
  • Type: Secondary
    CWE-287
  • Type: Primary
    CWE-306

Affected Vendors & Products
Type Vendor Product Version/Range Vulnerable?
Application redhat openshift_container_platform 4.0 Yes
Application redhat openshift_machine-config-operator ≤ 4.9.0 Yes

References

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For redhat's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.