CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2022-23628 — OPA is an open source, general-purpose policy engine
OPA is an open source, general-purpose policy engine. Under certain conditions, pretty-printing an abstract syntax tree (AST) that contains synthetic nodes could change the logic of some statements by reordering array literals. Example of policies impacted are those that parse and compare web paths. **All of these** three conditions have to be met to create an adverse effect: 1. An AST of Rego had to be **created programmatically** such that it ends up containing terms without a location (such as wildcard variables). 2. The AST had to be **pretty-printed** using the `github.com/open-policy-agent/opa/format` package. 3. The result of the pretty-printing had to be **parsed and evaluated again** via an OPA instance using the bundles, or the Golang packages. If any of these three conditions are not met, you are not affected. Notably, all three would be true if using **optimized bundles**, i.e. bundles created with `opa build -O=1` or higher. In that case, the optimizer would fulfil condition (1.), the result of that would be pretty-printed when writing the bundle to disk, fulfilling (2.). When the bundle was then used, we'd satisfy (3.). As a workaround users may disable optimization…
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 6.3 (3.1)
- Published
- 2022-02-09
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-682
Affected products
- openpolicyagent / open_policy_agent
Matched remediation archetype
General vulnerability remediation
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Confirm the affected component, deployment paths, reachable interfaces, and enabled features from inventories and configuration, without probing production destructively.
- Compare the advisory's affected conditions with the repository lockfiles, build manifests, artifacts, and runtime inventory.
- Identify data sensitivity, trust boundaries, and privilege level for every confirmed affected deployment.
Remediate safely
- Apply a vendor-supported fix or remove the affected component or feature; record the selected change and its source in the repository.
- Update direct and transitive dependency locks, generated artifacts, deployment manifests, and asset inventories together.
- Add a regression test for the documented unsafe condition using inert inputs and preserve rollback instructions.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.