A set of critical vulnerabilities known as IngressNightmare has been found in the Ingress NGINX Controller for Kubernetes, which could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution. These vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2025-24513, CVE-2025-24514, CVE-2025-1097, CVE-2025-1098, and CVE-2025-1974, expose over 6,500 Kubernetes clusters to potential attacks. Cloud security firm Wiz assigned a CVSS score of 9.8 to these flaws, with exploitation resulting in unauthorized access to Kubernetes secrets, risking complete cluster takeover.
The vulnerabilities specifically target the admission controller component of the Ingress NGINX Controller, which is responsible for exposing services to external traffic.
These flaws allow attackers to inject malicious NGINX configurations, bypass authentication, and execute arbitrary code. The vulnerabilities primarily affect Kubernetes clusters running with public internet access to their admission controllers, making them highly exploitable. It is estimated that 43% of cloud environments could be vulnerable, with many large organizations at risk.
The exploitation chain involves attackers sending specially crafted AdmissionReview requests containing malicious configurations to the admission controller.
This leads to the injection of arbitrary NGINX directives, enabling attackers to execute remote code and access cluster secrets. In particular, CVE-2025-1974 allows an attacker to load shared libraries during the NGINX configuration testing phase, leading to elevated privileges and potential cluster takeover. This vulnerability chain is considered especially dangerous due to the high level of privileges the Ingress NGINX Controller possesses.
Following responsible disclosure, patches have been released for Ingress NGINX Controller versions 1.12.1, 1.11.5, and 1.10.7. Users are urged to update immediately and to limit access to the admission controller by restricting it to the Kubernetes API server. In cases where updates cannot be performed immediately, experts advise temporarily disabling the admission controller or implementing network policies to prevent external access. These steps are essential to securing vulnerable Kubernetes environments and preventing potential exploitation of the IngressNightmare flaws.
