Description
On a Kong Mesh global control plane, resources received over the zone-to-global KDS sync are attributed using the in-band, sender-controlled ControlPlane.Identifier rather than the authenticated zone identity derived from the connection. Authenticated zones can have the global control plane store and re-distribute those resources as belonging to another zone.



The result is a cross-zone isolation bypass: the holder of a single enrolled zone's credential can inject, attribute, and overwrite resources in another zone's namespace mesh-wide.




The root cause lives in Kuma's open-source KDS sync code, which Kong Mesh's control plane is built on.
Published: 2026-08-17
Score: 7 High
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

No analysis available yet.

Remediation

Vendor Solution

Upgrade to Kong Mesh 2.7.29, 2.9.19, 2.11.18, 2.12.14, 2.13.10 or 2.14.2, whichever matches your release line. In patched versions the global KDS ingest path attributes synced resources by the authenticated connection identity instead of the in-band field.


Vendor Workaround

Restrict which zones may enroll and protect zone tokens. No configuration flag disables the in-band attribution, so upgrading is the only fix.

Tracking

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Advisories

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History

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description On a Kong Mesh global control plane, resources received over the zone-to-global KDS sync are attributed using the in-band, sender-controlled ControlPlane.Identifier rather than the authenticated zone identity derived from the connection. Authenticated zones can have the global control plane store and re-distribute those resources as belonging to another zone. The result is a cross-zone isolation bypass: the holder of a single enrolled zone's credential can inject, attribute, and overwrite resources in another zone's namespace mesh-wide. The root cause lives in Kuma's open-source KDS sync code, which Kong Mesh's control plane is built on.
Title Kong Mesh multi-zone: the global control plane attributes KDS-synced resources by an unvalidated in-band zone identifier
Weaknesses CWE-345
CWE-863
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:L/VI:H/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N'}


Subscriptions

No data.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Kong

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-17T12:08:11.470Z

Reserved: 2026-08-03T15:20:40.972Z

Link: CVE-2026-18674

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

No data.

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses
  • CWE-345

    Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity

  • CWE-863

    Incorrect Authorization