Vulnerability details
CVE-2025-47281
Kyverno's Improper JMESPath Variable Evaluation Leads to Denial of Service
Official description
Kyverno is a policy engine designed for cloud native platform engineering teams. In versions 1.14.1 and below, a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability exists due to improper handling of JMESPath variable substitutions. Attackers with permissions to create or update Kyverno policies can craft expressions using the {{@}} variable combined with a pipe and an invalid JMESPath function (e.g., {{@ | non_existent_function }}). This leads to a nil value being substituted into the policy structure. Subsequent processing by internal functions, specifically getValueAsStringMap, which expect string values, results in a panic due to a type assertion failure (interface {} is nil, not string). This crashes Kyverno worker threads in the admission controller and causes continuous crashes of the reports controller pod. This is fixed in version 1.14.2.
CVSS scores
| Score | Version | Source | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.7High | 3.1 | CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA) (GitHub_M) | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H |
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Versions | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| kyverno | kyverno | < 1.14.2 | CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA) |
References and advisories
2Details
- Published
- 2025-07-24
- Last updated
- 2025-07-24
- State
- Published
- Assigner (CNA)
- GitHub_M
Exploit prediction (EPSS)
SSVC assessment (CISA)
- Automatable
- No
- Exploitation
- Proof of concept
- Technical impact
- Partial
Weaknesses (CWE)
- CWE-20Improper Input Validation
- CWE-248Uncaught Exception