CVE-2023-35165

AWS CDK EKS overly permissive trust policies

State
Published
Severity
6.6 Medium
Published
Jun 23, 2023
Updated
Dec 5, 2024
Reserved
Jun 14, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open-source software development framework to define cloud infrastructure in code and provision it through AWS CloudFormation. In the packages `aws-cdk-lib` 2.0.0 until 2.80.0 and `@aws-cdk/aws-eks` 1.57.0 until 1.202.0, `eks.Cluster` and `eks.FargateCluster` constructs create two roles, `CreationRole` and `default MastersRole`, that have an overly permissive trust policy.

The first, referred to as the `CreationRole`, is used by lambda handlers to create the cluster and deploy Kubernetes resources (e.g `KubernetesManifest`, `HelmChart`, ...) onto it. Users with CDK version higher or equal to 1.62.0 (including v2 users) may be affected.

The second, referred to as the `default MastersRole`, is provisioned only if the `mastersRole` property isn't provided and has permissions to execute `kubectl` commands on the cluster. Users with CDK version higher or equal to 1.57.0 (including v2 users) may be affected.

The issue has been fixed in `@aws-cdk/aws-eks` v1.202.0 and `aws-cdk-lib` v2.80.0. These versions no longer use the account root principal. Instead, they restrict the trust policy to the specific roles of lambda handlers that need it. There is no workaround available for CreationRole. To avoid creating the `default MastersRole`, use the `mastersRole` property to explicitly provide a role.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.16.6 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HGitHub_M

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
aws-cdkaws
  • aws-cdk-lib >= 2.0.0, < 2.80.0Affected
  • @aws-cdk/aws-eks >= 1.57.0, < 1.202.0Affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.