kuma-dp connects to control plane without verifying TLS certificate when no CA is configured
When kuma-dp is started against an HTTPS control plane and the operator did not pass a CA certificate, the data plane connects with TLS peer verification disabled. The dataplane authentication token is sent over this unverified connection ## Impact An on-path attacker can intercept the dataplane authentication token and impersonate the control plane to the data plane, allowing them to inject a forged bootstrap configuration and take over the proxy ## Affected configurations - Universal mode `kuma-dp` started against an HTTPS control plane without `--ca-cert-file` (or `KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_CA_CERT` unset) ## Not affected - Kubernetes installs done through the standard installers (`kumactl install control-plane` or the official Helm chart). In both cases the control plane's mutating admission webhook injects `KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_CA_CERT` into every sidecar at pod admission, so each `kuma-dp` starts with the CA already configured ## Workarounds Set `--ca-cert-file` (or `KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_CA_CERT`) on every Universal mode data plane and point it 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
describes (2)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-52724US | — | — | ||
Kuma is a modern Envoy-based service mesh that can run on every cloud across both Kubernetes and VMs. Prior to 2.7.26, 2.9.16, 2.11.14, 2.12.11, and 2.13.7, Universal mode kuma-dp… | ||||
| CVE-2026-18679US | — | — | ||
When kuma-dp is started against an HTTPS control plane and the operator did not pass a CA certificate, the data plane connects with TLS peer verification disabled, and the dataplan… | ||||
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