CVE-2025-59361

CriticalPublic PoCRCE

Published: 15 September 2025

Published

15 September 2025

Modified

14 October 2025

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS Score 0.0112 78.4th percentile

Risk Priority 20 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-59361 is a critical-severity OS Command Injection (CWE-78) vulnerability in Chaos-Mesh Chaos Mesh. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Unix Shell (T1059.004); ranked in the top 21.6% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Unix Shell (T1059.004) and 3 other techniques. What defenders deploy: see the NIST 800-53 controls recommended below.

Threat & Defense Details

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI

SI-10 Information Input Validation good match

prevent

Directly mitigates the OS command injection (CWE-78) in cleanIptables by requiring validation and sanitization of all inputs before execution in system commands.

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match

prevent

Ensures timely remediation of the specific vulnerability through identification, testing, and deployment of patches like Chaos Mesh PR #4702.

AC-6 Least Privilege partial match

prevent

Limits the scope and impact of remote code execution across the cluster by enforcing least privilege on the Chaos Controller Manager process.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1059.004 Unix Shell Execution

Adversaries may abuse Unix shell commands and scripts for execution.

attack.mitre.org →

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.

attack.mitre.org →

T1210 Exploitation of Remote Services Lateral Movement

Adversaries may exploit remote services to gain unauthorized access to internal systems once inside of a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1609 Container Administration Command Execution

Adversaries may abuse a container administration service to execute commands within a container.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

OS command injection vulnerability in Chaos Controller Manager's cleanIptables mutation enables Unix shell command execution (T1059.004), exploitation of the in-cluster GraphQL remote service (T1210), privilege escalation from unprivileged pod access to cluster-wide RCE (T1068), and execution of container administration commands via fault injections and pod manipulations (T1609).

NVD Description

The cleanIptables mutation in Chaos Controller Manager is vulnerable to OS command injection. In conjunction with CVE-2025-59358, this allows unauthenticated in-cluster attackers to perform remote code execution across the cluster.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2025-59361, published on 2025-09-15, is an OS command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) in the cleanIptables mutation of the Chaos Controller Manager within Chaos Mesh. This flaw affects users of Chaos Mesh, a Kubernetes chaos engineering platform, and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), marking it as critical due to its potential for high-impact network-accessible exploitation without privileges or user interaction.

Unauthenticated attackers already present within the Kubernetes cluster can exploit this vulnerability in conjunction with CVE-2025-59358 to achieve remote code execution across the cluster, enabling broad compromise of cluster resources.

Mitigation is addressed in Chaos Mesh pull request #4702 on GitHub, which patches the command injection issue. A JFrog security advisory details the vulnerabilities' chain, highlighting their potential to lead to full Kubernetes cluster takeover.