Overview
The CVE-2025-59537 vulnerability affects Argo CD, a GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. This vulnerability is of great concern due to its potential to crash the API server and cause a denial of service to legitimate clients. If exploited, it could lead to system compromise or data leakage, posing a significant risk to organizations using the affected versions of Argo CD.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-59537
Severity: High (CVSS: 7.5)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Denial of service, potential system compromise, or data leakage
Affected Products
Product | Affected Versions
Argo CD | 1.2.0 through 1.8.7, 2.0.0-rc1 through 2.14.19, 3.0.0-rc1 through 3.2.0-rc1, 3.1.7 and 3.0.18
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability stems from a flaw in Argo CD’s handling of API requests. With the default configuration, Argo CD’s /api/webhook endpoint will crash the entire argocd-server process when it receives a Gogs push event whose JSON field commits[].repo is not set or is null. This can be exploited by an attacker to send a malicious API request that crashes the API server and causes a denial of service.
Conceptual Example Code
Below is a conceptual example of a malicious HTTP POST request exploiting the vulnerability:
POST /api/webhook HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{
"commits": [
{
"repo": null
}
]
}
Mitigation Measures
To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor patch in versions 2.14.20, 3.2.0-rc2, 3.1.8 and 3.0.19. In the interim, use of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary mitigation measure.
