Chaos Mesh flaws enable unauthenticated Kubernetes cluster takeover

JFrog Security Research disclosed four vulnerabilities in the Chaos Mesh chaos-engineering platform that can let attackers with in-cluster network access compromise Kubernetes environments, including three critical command-injection bugs and one authentication bypass. The issues, tracked as CVE-2025-59358, CVE-2025-59359, CVE-2025-59360, and CVE-2025-59361, affect Chaos Mesh deployments prior to 2.7.3 and stem from an exposed unauthenticated GraphQL server plus unsafe shell command construction in the cleanTcs, killProcesses, and cleanIptables mutations. JFrog said the default configuration can expose the GraphQL interface to any pod on the cluster, allowing even an unprivileged workload to reach vulnerable operations.

Researchers reported that the flaws can be chained to invoke fault injections, execute arbitrary commands on pods and nodes, steal Kubernetes service account tokens, move laterally, and potentially take over an entire cluster. The command-injection bugs were rated CVSS 9.8 and are especially dangerous because Chaos Mesh components such as the Controller Manager and Chaos Daemon typically run with elevated privileges. Chaos Mesh has issued fixes, including changes referenced in GitHub pull request #4702, and JFrog urged users to upgrade immediately to Chaos Mesh 2.7.3 or disable the controller server through Helm as a temporary mitigation; platforms that integrate Chaos Mesh, including Azure Chaos Studio for AKS, may also be exposed.