CVE-2025-71426: Contrast before 1.4.1 Coordinator Impersonation via Unauthenticated Recovery

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-71426 is a high (CVSS 7.1) Improper Authorization vulnerability in edgelesssys contrast. EPSS estimates a 0.14% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 27-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 08-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Contrast is a confidential-computing runtime for Kubernetes. In versions before 1.4.1, a recovering Coordinator does not verify the seed supplied by the recovering party. An attacker can therefore stand up a rogue Coordinator whose manifest passes validation but whose secret seed is attacker-controlled. If network traffic is redirected from the legitimate Coordinator to the attacker's Coordinator, a workload owner can be impersonated when they either set a new manifest without comparing the returned root CA certificate against the existing one (the default behavior of the contrast CLI) or verify the Coordinator without comparing the root CA certificate against a trusted reference. Under these conditions the attacker can issue certificates that chain back to the rogue Coordinator's root CA and recover arbitrary workload secrets of workloads deployed after the attack. Secrets of the legitimate Coordinator (seed, workload secrets, CA), workload integrity, and certificates chaining to the mesh CA are not affected.

• CWE-285Improper AuthorizationThe product does not perform or incorrectly performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.