1.29.1

Solo build of Istio version 1.29.1 patch release.

This release note describes what’s different between Solo builds of Istio versions 1.29.0 and 1.29.1.

Security Notice

This release contains fixes to a number of CVEs.

CVE-2026-26308: (CVSS score 7.5, High): Fixed RBAC header matcher to validate each header value individually instead of concatenating multiple header values into a single string. This prevents potential bypasses when requests contain multiple values for the same header.
CVE-2026-26311: (CVSS score 5.9, Medium): Fixed an issue where filter chain execution could continue on HTTP streams that had been reset but not yet destroyed, potentially causing use-after-free conditions.
CVE-2026-26310: (CVSS score 5.9, Medium): Fixed a crash in Utility::getAddressWithPort when called with a scoped IPv6 address (e.g., fe80::1%eth0).
CVE-2026-26309: (CVSS score 5.3, Medium): Fixed an off-by-one write in JsonEscaper::escapeString() that could corrupt the string null terminator.
CVE-2026-26330: (CVSS score 5.3, Medium): Fixed a bug in the gRPC rate limit client that could lead to potential use-after-free issues. Only affects Istio 1.28 and 1.29.

CVE-2026-31838 / GHSA-974c-2wxh-g4ww: (CVSS score 6.9, Medium): Debug Endpoints Allow Cross-Namespace Proxy Data Access.
CVE-2026-31837 / GHSA-v75c-crr9-733c: (CVSS score 8.7, High): JWKS Resolver Failure May Allow Authentication Bypass Using Known Default Keys.

Fixed XDS debug endpoints on plaintext port 15010 to require authentication, preventing unauthenticated access to proxy configuration.
Fixed potential SSRF in WasmPlugin image fetching by validating bearer token realm URLs.
Fixed HTTP debug endpoints on port 15014 to enforce namespace-based authorization, preventing cross-namespace proxy data access.

Added metrics to track mesh config parsing and validation status. New pilot_meshconfig_validation_status and pilot_meshnetworks_validation_status gauges indicate whether the current mesh configuration is valid (0) or invalid (1).
Added support for loading license keys from mounted volumes. The path where the volume is mounted should be provided as the license.volume Helm value.
Added a check to istioctl multicluster check validation to ensure all Istio proxy containers and all sidecar-injector ConfigMap templates have the ISTIO_META_NETWORK environment variable set to match the network label on the istio-system namespace.
Added check to istioctl multicluster check to verify ambient.dnsCapture is enabled in istio-cni-config ConfigMap.
Added check to istioctl multicluster check to verify topology.istio.io/cluster label is present and valid on istio-remote gateways.
Fixed the istioctl multicluster check pod check to dynamically discover eastwest gateway names from Gateway objects instead of hardcoding istio-eastwest.
Fixed a bug where traffic could be non-deterministically routed through a prefer-other ServiceEntry instead of a non-prefer-other ServiceEntry with the same hostname. This could occur when a VirtualService referenced a hostname served by both types of ServiceEntry and there was an explicit sidecar scope that limited the visibility of the non-prefer-other ServiceEntry.

No changes in this section.