The NGINX Ingress Controller is a Kubernetes component that uses NGINX as a reverse proxy and load balancer to manage external access to services within a Kubernetes cluster. It processes Ingress resources, which define rules for routing HTTP and HTTPS traffic to backend services.
In 2025, several critical vulnerabilities were disclosed in the Kubernetes Ingress-NGINX Controller, which is a widely used routing component based on Nginx and often discussed alongside core Nginx in security contexts. These issues were collectively nicknamed IngressNightmare:
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