Chaos Mesh Critical GraphQL Flaws Enable RCE and Full Kubernetes Cluster Takeover

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple critical security vulnerabilities in Chaos Mesh that, if successfully exploited, could lead to cluster takeover in Kubernetes environments.

“Attackers need only minimal in-cluster network access to exploit these vulnerabilities, execute the platform’s fault injections (such as shutting down pods or disrupting network communications), and perform further malicious actions, including stealing privileged service account tokens,” JFrog said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

Chaos Mesh is an open-source cloud-native Chaos Engineering platform that offers various types of fault simulation and simulates various abnormalities that might occur during the software development lifecycle.

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The issues, collectively called Chaotic Deputy, are listed below –

• CVE-2025-59358 (CVSS score: 7.5) – The Chaos Controller Manager in Chaos Mesh exposes a GraphQL debugging server without authentication to the entire Kubernetes cluster, which provides an API to kill arbitrary processes in any Kubernetes pod, leading to cluster-wide denial-of-service
• CVE-2025-59359 (CVSS score: 9.8) – The cleanTcs mutation in Chaos Controller Manager is vulnerable to operating system command injection
• CVE-2025-59360 (CVSS score: 9.8) – The killProcesses mutation in Chaos Controller Manager is vulnerable to operating system command injection
• CVE-2025-59361 (CVSS score: 9.8) – The cleanIptables mutation in Chaos Controller Manager is vulnerable to operating system command injection

An in-cluster attacker, i.e., a threat actor with initial access to the cluster’s network, could chain CVE-2025-59359, CVE-2025-59360, CVE-2025-59361, or with CVE-2025-59358 to perform remote code execution across the cluster, even in the default configuration of Chaos Mesh.

JFrog said the vulnerabilities stem from insufficient authentication mechanisms within the Chaos Controller Manager’s GraphQL server, allowing unauthenticated attackers to run arbitrary commands on the Chaos Daemon, resulting in cluster takeover.

Threat actors could then leverage the access to potentially exfiltrate sensitive data, disrupt critical services, or even move laterally across the cluster to escalate privileges.

Following responsible disclosure on May 6, 2025, all the identified shortcomings were addressed by Chaos Mesh with the release of version 2.7.3 on August 21.

Users are advised to update their installations to the latest version as soon as possible. If immediate patching is not an option, it’s recommended to restrict network traffic to the Chaos Mesh daemon and API server, and avoid running Chaos Mesh in open or loosely secured environments.

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