Rancher Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published 2019-06-06 7 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-gc62-j469-9gjm , GO-2023-1991 , EUVD-2022-3935

cvss: 8.8; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.1%; EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 66%
public exploits: 0; none known

In Rancher 1 and 2 through 2.2.3, unprivileged users (if allowed to deploy nodes) can gain admin access to the Rancher management plane because node driver options intentionally allow posting certain data to the cloud. The problem is that a user could choose to post a sensitive file such as /root/.kube/config or /var/lib/rancher/management-state/cred/kubeconfig-system.yaml.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

go github.com/rancher/rancher 1.6.27, 2.2.4, 2.2.4+incompatible

Exploit prediction

1.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 66% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	8.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	4.0	AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:N/A:N
GitHub	3.0	8.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
go	github.com/rancher/rancher	>=2.0.0, <2.2.4 <1.6.27 >=2.0.0+incompatible, <2.2.4+incompatible	2.2.4 1.6.27 2.2.4+incompatible

Classification

Weakness

CWE-668 Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere
CWE-862 Missing Authorization

References

forums.rancher.com /c/announcements
release-notes, vendor-advisory
forums.rancher.com /t/rancher-release-v2-2-4-addresses-rancher-cve-2019-12274-and-cve-2019-12303/14466
web, release-notes, vendor-advisory
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2019-12274
advisory
github.com /advisories/GHSA-gc62-j469-9gjm
advisory

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary