CVE-2021-20278

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-05-28 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-290

Description

An authentication bypass vulnerability was found in Kiali in versions before 1.31.0 when the authentication strategy `OpenID` is used. When RBAC is enabled, Kiali assumes that some of the token validation is handled by the underlying cluster. When OpenID `implicit flow` is used with RBAC turned off, this token validation doesn't occur, and this allows a malicious user to bypass the authentication.

Affected products

kiali: before 1.31.0 — fixed in 1.31.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: kiali 1.31.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1937171
https://kiali.io/news/security-bulletins/kiali-security-002/
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1937171
https://kiali.io/news/security-bulletins/kiali-security-002/

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