kumactl connects to control plane without verifying TLS certificate when no CA is configured

Overview

When an operator adds an HTTPS control plane profile to kumactl without providing a CA certificate, kumactl disables TLS verification and sends API tokens over the unverified connection

Impact

An attacker on the network path between the operator and the control plane can intercept user or admin API tokens and then act against the control plane as that user

Affected configurations

• kumactl profiles manually added against an HTTPS control plane endpoint without --ca-cert-file

Not affected

• The default local profile, which uses plain HTTP

Workarounds

When adding an HTTPS control plane profile to kumactl, always pass --ca-cert-file pointing at the control plane's serving CA. Alternatively, terminate the control plane behind a publicly trusted certificate; the patched releases will verify successfully against the operating system trust store with no further configuration

Resources

• Fix: https://github.com/kumahq/kuma/pull/16777

Affected packages

• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 < 2.7.26
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 >= 2.8.0, < 2.9.16
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 >= 2.10.0, < 2.11.14
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 >= 2.12.0, < 2.12.11
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 >= 2.13.0, < 2.13.7
• github.com/kumahq/kuma <= 1.8.1

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 2.7.26
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 2.9.16
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 2.11.14
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 2.12.11
• github.com/kumahq/kuma/v2 2.13.7