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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 5.9 CVE-2021-21303 BIT-helm-2021-21303EUVD-2021-1306GHSA-c38g-469g-cmgxGO-2022-1040

Injection attack in Helm

Published Feb 5, 2021 · Updated Aug 3, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Helm is open-source software which is essentially "The Kubernetes Package Manager". Helm is a tool for managing Charts. Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources. In Helm from version 3.0 and before version 3.5.2, there a few cases where data loaded from potentially untrusted sources was not properly sanitized. When a SemVer in the `version` field of a chart is invalid, in some cases Helm allows the string to be used "as is" without sanitizing. Helm fails to properly sanitized some fields present on Helm repository `index.yaml` files. Helm does not properly sanitized some fields in the `plugin.yaml` file for plugins In some cases, Helm does not properly sanitize the fields in the `Chart.yaml` file. By exploiting these attack vectors, core maintainers were able to send deceptive information to a terminal screen running the `helm` command, as well as obscure or alter information on the screen. In some cases, we could send codes that terminals used to execute higher-order logic, like clearing a terminal screen. Further, during evaluation, the Helm maintainers discovered a few other fields that were not properly sanitized when read out of repository index files. This fix remedies all such cases, and once again enforces SemVer2 policies on version fields. All users of the Helm 3 should upgrade to the fixed version 3.5.2 or later. Those who use Helm as a library should verify that they either sanitize this data on their own, or use the proper Helm API calls to sanitize the data.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
helm helm > 3.0, < 3.5.2 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS helm No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.22 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.21 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.20 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.19 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.18 helm 3.6.0-r0 —
Alpine v3.17 helm 3.6.0-r0 —

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 2 (CBL-Mariner) helm 3.4.1-4 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go helm.sh/helm/v3 >= 3.0.0, < 3.5.2 3.5.2 GHSA-c38g-469g-cmgx

Advisories 1

References