Ironic-image is an OpenStack Ironic deployment packaged and configured by Metal3. When the reverse proxy mode is enabled by the `IRONIC_REVERSE_PROXY_SETUP` variable set to `true`, 1) HTTP basic credentials are validated on the HTTPD side in a separate container, not in the Ironic service itself and 2) Ironic listens in host network on a private port 6388 on localhost by default. As a result, when the reverse proxy mode is used, any Pod or local Unix user on the control plane Node can access the Ironic API on the private port without authentication. A similar problem affects Ironic Inspector (`INSPECTOR_REVERSE_PROXY_SETUP` set to `true`), although the attack potential is smaller there. This issue affects operators deploying ironic-image in the reverse proxy mode, which is the recommended mode when TLS is used (also recommended), with the `IRONIC_PRIVATE_PORT` variable unset or set to a numeric value. In this case, an attacker with enough privileges to launch a pod on the control plane with host networking can access Ironic API and use it to modify bare-metal machine, e.g. provision them with a new image or change their BIOS settings. This vulnerability is fixed in 24.1.1.
The product requires authentication, but the product has an alternate path or channel that does not require authentication.