Argo CdApplication · Argoproj

CVE-2023-40584

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-09-07
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 2.6.15 / 2.7.14 or later.
See remediation →
71/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Argo CD is a declarative continuous deployment for Kubernetes. All versions of ArgoCD starting from v2.4 have a bug where the ArgoCD repo-server component is vulnerable to a Denial-of-Service attack vector. Specifically, the said component extracts a user-controlled tar.gz file without validating the size of its inner files. As a result, a malicious, low-privileged user can send a malicious tar.gz file that exploits this vulnerability to the repo-server, thereby harming the system's functionality and availability. Additionally, the repo-server is susceptible to another vulnerability due to the fact that it does not check the extracted file permissions before attempting to delete them. Consequently, an attacker can craft a malicious tar.gz archive in a way that prevents the deletion of its inner files when the manifest generation process is completed. A patch for this vulnerability has been released in versions 2.6.15, 2.7.14, and 2.8.3. Users are advised to upgrade. The only way to completely resolve the issue is to upgrade, however users unable to upgrade should configure RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and provide access for configuring applications only to a limited number of administrators. These administrators should utilize trusted and verified Helm charts.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-400

A single request can consume unbounded CPU, memory, or connections, so a modest amount of malicious traffic exhausts the service. The result is denial of service for everyone else. Remediation is enforcing limits, quotas, and timeouts on what any one request can use.

General guidance for the uncontrolled resource consumption class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Argo CdApplication
Affected:>= 2.4.0, < 2.6.15>= 2.7.0, < 2.7.14>= 2.8.0, < 2.8.3

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 2.6.15 / 2.7.14 / 2.8.3 or later
Fixed in 2.6.152.7.142.8.3
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

2.8.3 (or 2.6.15/2.7.14 depending on your current version branch)

  1. Identify your current Argo CD version using 'argocd version' or kubectl get deployment -n argocd
  2. Determine which version branch you're on (2.6.x, 2.7.x, or 2.8.x) to select the appropriate upgrade target
  3. Backup your Argo CD installation: export all Argo CD manifests (kubectl get all -n argocd -o yaml > argocd-backup.yaml) and any custom ConfigMaps or Secrets
  4. Upgrade to the latest patched version for your branch: for 2.6.x upgrade to 2.6.15, for 2.7.x upgrade to 2.7.14, or for 2.8.x upgrade to 2.8.3
  5. If using kubectl: kubectl set image deployment/argocd-repo-server repo-server=argoproj/argo-cd:v2.8.3 -n argocd (or appropriate version for your branch)
  6. If using Helm: helm upgrade argocd argo/argo-cd --set image.tag=v2.8.3 (or appropriate version)
  7. Verify the upgrade: kubectl rollout status deployment/argocd-repo-server -n argocd and check pod logs for errors
  8. Test application synchronization to confirm repo-server functionality is intact
Caveat Review the Argo CD release notes for your target version to check for any breaking changes or required manual migrations before upgrading

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $1,600. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-40584 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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