The Kubernetes API server component in versions prior to 1.15.9, 1.16.0-1.16.6, and 1.17.0-1.17.2 has been found to be vulnerable to a denial of service attack via successful API requests.
Improper input validation in the Kubernetes API server in versions v1.0-1.12 and versions prior to v1.13.12, v1.14.8, v1.15.5, and v1.16.2 allows authorized users to send malicious YAML or JSON payloads, causing the API server to consume excessive CPU or memory, potentially crashing and becoming unavailable. Prior to v1.14.0, default RBAC policy authorized anonymous users to submit requests that could trigger this vulnerability. Clusters upgraded from a version prior to v1.14.0 keep the more permissive policy by default for backwards compatibility.
The Kubernetes client-go library logs request headers at verbosity levels of 7 or higher. This can disclose credentials to unauthorized users via logs or command output. Kubernetes components (such as kube-apiserver) prior to v1.16.0, which make use of basic or bearer token authentication, and run at high verbosity levels, are affected.