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Fencer Vulns
high 8.1

CVE-2023-27486 json

Insufficient authorization validation between zones when xCAT zones are enabled

published 2023-03-08 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-31253

cvss
8.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.9%
EPSS 0.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 58%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

xCAT is a toolkit for deployment and administration of computer clusters. In versions prior to 2.16.5 if zones are configured as a mechanism to secure clusters in XCAT, it is possible for a local root user from one node to obtain credentials to SSH to any node in any zone, except the management node of the default zone. XCAT zones are not enabled by default. Only users that use the optional zone feature are impacted. All versions of xCAT prior to xCAT 2.16.5 are vulnerable. This problem has been fixed in xCAT 2.16.5. Users making use of zones should upgrade to 2.16.5. Users unable to upgrade may mitigate the issue by disabling zones or patching the management node with the fix contained in commit `85149c37f49`.

Patch / fix

  • xcat_project xcat 2.16.5

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-27486 updated cvss 7.2

xcat: Insufficient authorization validation between zones when xCAT zones are enabled

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.85% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 58% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/xcat2/xcat-core/issues/7246 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • xcat2 xcat-core

Classification

Weakness

References

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.