Vulnerability · Published Aug 12, 2026 · Assigned by Kong

CVE-2026-18677Kong Mesh: a dataplane token without a workload binding can claim any workload's SPIFFE identity

Medium 6.0

In plain English

A medium-severity authentication bypass by spoofing in Kong Mesh from Kong Inc.. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 48% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 4.0)6.0Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.6%top 51.9% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

In Kong Mesh running in universal mode with a MeshIdentity whose SPIFFE ID path template derives from the dataplane's kuma.io/workload label, the XDS authenticator in kuma-cp validates that label only when the dataplane token is bound to a workload. Workload binding is optional, so a dataplane presenting a tags-bound token can register with kuma.io/workload set to any value and obtain another workload's SPIFFE identity.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
Kong Inc.	Kong Mesh	2.13.0 – before 2.13.102.14.0 – before 2.14.2

Weakness: CWE-290 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

References

Upstream advisory GHSA-744g-c785-x65q vendor-advisory
kumahq/kuma#17474 (master) patch
kumahq/kuma#17503 (release-2.13 backport) patch
kumahq/kuma#17502 (release-2.14 backport) patch
Kong MESH Changelog release-notes