CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-22736 — Argo CD is a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes

High CVSS 8.5

Argo CD is a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. Versions starting with 2.5.0-rc1 and above, prior to 2.5.8, and version 2.6.0-rc4, are vulnerable to an authorization bypass bug which allows a malicious Argo CD user to deploy Applications outside the configured allowed namespaces. Reconciled Application namespaces are specified as a comma-delimited list of glob patterns. When sharding is enabled on the Application controller, it does not enforce that list of patterns when reconciling Applications. For example, if Application namespaces are configured to be argocd-*, the Application controller may reconcile an Application installed in a namespace called other, even though it does not start with argocd-. Reconciliation of the out-of-bounds Application is only triggered when the Application is updated, so the attacker must be able to cause an update operation on the Application resource. This bug only applies to users who have explicitly enabled the "apps-in-any-namespace" feature by setting `application.namespaces` in the argocd-cmd-params-cm ConfigMap or otherwise setting the `--application-namespaces` flags on the Application controller and API server comp…

Severity
High
CVSS
8.5 (3.1)
Published
2023-01-26
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-862

Affected products

  • argoproj / argo_cd
  • argoproj / argo_cd / 2.6.0

Showing 2 representative product identities from 5 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

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Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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