The panic terminates the entire kuma-cp process, HTTP API, the health and readiness endpoints, and xDS. Unauthenticated access to the dataplane gRPC server can trigger the crash with a malformed token
A single request is a transient interruption; sustaining an outage requires repeated requests.
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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 validator rejects a non-string kid header and the dataplane server recovers from handler panics.
Workaround
Restrict network access to the dataplane (xDS) gRPC port to trusted data planes.
Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| Description | The dataplane token validator in kuma-cp performs an unchecked Go type assertion on the JWT kid header. A token whose kid is a JSON number decodes as a float64 and triggers a runtime panic before any signature, claims, or authorization check runs. The panic terminates the entire kuma-cp process, HTTP API, the health and readiness endpoints, and xDS. Unauthenticated access to the dataplane gRPC server can trigger the crash with a malformed token A single request is a transient interruption; sustaining an outage requires repeated requests. | |
| Title | Kong Mesh: control plane denial of service via a malformed dataplane token with a non-string JWT kid | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-248 CWE-704 |
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cvssV4_0
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: Kong
Published:
Updated: 2026-08-12T18:36:17.377Z
Reserved: 2026-08-03T15:20:42.168Z
Link: CVE-2026-18675
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Status : Received
Published: 2026-08-12T19:17:30.650
Modified: 2026-08-12T19:17:30.650
Link: CVE-2026-18675
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OpenCVE Enrichment
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