Impact Envoy Gateway accepts extension-managed custom backendRefs from an HTTPRoute to a backend resource in another namespace without requiring a matching Gateway API ReferenceGrant in the target namespace. This breaks the Gateway API cross-namespace consent model: the namespace that owns the referenced backend resource does not need to opt in with a ReferenceGrant before another namespace’s HTTPRoute can use that resource. Patches "1.7.4" (https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/releases/tag/v1.7.4) "1.8.1" (https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/releases/tag/v1.8.1)