CVE-2025-1974: ingress-nginx admission controller RCE escalation

Is it exploited?

Reported, not confirmed by CISA. VulnCheck KEV lists it as exploited in the wild. CISA has not added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as of 29 Oct 2026.

VulnCheck KEV lists it since 25 Mar 2025. It cites 1 public report, the first from 25 Mar 2025.

• ess.coalitioninc.com

How likely is exploitation in the next 30 days?

99.4%

EPSS score, percentile 99.9 of all scored records. A probability estimated by FIRST, not a report of exploitation.

CISA's SSVC assessment in the CVE record lists exploitation as poc.

How severe?

9.8 Critical

CVSS v3.1 base score, given by the CNA

What should I do?

CISA has set no required action, because the vulnerability is not in KEV.

The CVE record links no vendor advisory, patch or mitigation.

Which versions are affected?

Affected

• 1.11.4 and earlier
• 1.12.0

Versions by product

Source: CISA KEV 2026.10.29, as of 29 Oct 2026; VulnCheck KEV, as of 30 Oct 2026; FIRST EPSS, as of 29 Oct 2026; CVE List, as of 30 Oct 2026. About the data.

Description

ingress-nginx admission controller RCE escalation

A security issue was discovered in Kubernetes where under certain conditions, an unauthenticated attacker with access to the pod network can achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller. This can lead to disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets cluster-wide.)

Source: CVE List, as of 30 Oct 2026. About the data.

What to do

Advisories and patches

The CVE record links no vendor advisory, patch or mitigation.

Workaround (from the CVE record)

Before applying the patch, this issue can be mitigated by disabling the Validating Admission Controller functionality of ingress-nginx.

This summary is based on the CVE record as of 30 Oct 2026. Check the vendor's advisory before you act: affected versions and fixes can change.

Affected products and versions

Source: CVE List, as of 30 Oct 2026. About the data.

Timeline