CyberSecBulletin
CVE-2026-44945NVD status: Awaiting Analysis

Rancher: Unintended Proxy or Intermediary

Published Updated By the CyberSecBulletin desk

CVE-2026-44945 is a critical-severity unintended proxy or intermediary vulnerability in Rancher from SUSE, with a CVSS 3.1 base score of 9.1 out of 10. It can be exploited remotely over the network by an attacker with administrator privileges, without any action from a user. The record lists versions 2.11.16, 2.12.12, 2.13.8 as the first without the flaw, so updating Rancher to one of those releases or later removes the exposure. There is no confirmed exploitation so far. EPSS estimates a 0.56% chance of exploitation within 30 days, which is low compared with other CVEs.

Patch this week

Critical severity: a successful attack would have severe impact.

What to do

  1. Update Rancher to 2.11.16 or 2.12.12 or 2.13.8 or 2.14.2, whichever matches your release line, or a later version.
  2. Read the advisory on github.com for workarounds and exact fixed builds.

Affected products and versions

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed in
SUSERancher2.11.0 up to, but not including, 2.11.16; 2.12.0 up to, but not including, 2.12.12; 2.13.0 up to, but not including, 2.13.8; 2.14.0 up to, but not including, 2.14.22.11.16, 2.12.12, 2.13.8, 2.14.2

Version data comes from the organisation that assigned the CVE. Confirm against the vendor advisory before deciding you are unaffected.

How the severity score breaks down

Attack vector
NetworkCan be exploited remotely over a network, including the internet.
Attack complexity
LowNo special conditions are needed; the attack works reliably.
Privileges required
HighAdministrator-level access is required first.
User interaction
NoneNo action by a victim is required.
Scope
ChangedThe attack can reach beyond the vulnerable component into other systems.
Confidentiality
HighAll data handled by the component can be read.
Integrity
HighData or code can be modified at will.
Availability
HighThe component can be taken down completely.

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H. Scored by CNA (suse.de).

Official description

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Rancher's impersonation middleware (pkg/auth/requests/impersonate.go). An authenticated Rancher user with the default user global role can gain full administrative access to the Rancher control plane and transitively to all downstream clusters it manages. This issue affects Rancher: from 2.11.0 before 2.11.16, from 2.12.0 before 2.12.12, from 2.13.0 before 2.13.8, and from 2.14.0 before 2.14.2.

Source: the CVE record as published by its numbering authority, via NVD and CVE.org.

The underlying weakness: Unintended Proxy or Intermediary

The product receives a request, message, or directive from an upstream component, but the product does not sufficiently preserve the original source of the request before forwarding the request to an external actor that is outside of the product's control sphere.

How developers prevent this class of flaw

  • Enforce the use of strong mutual authentication mechanism between the two parties.
  • Whenever a product is an intermediary or proxy for transactions between two other components, the proxy core should not drop the identity of the initiator of the transaction. The immutability of the identity of the initiator must be maintained and should be forwarded all the way to the target.

More Unintended Proxy or Intermediary vulnerabilities (CWE-441)

Timeline

  1. CVE record published.
  2. CISA published its SSVC assessment (exploitation: none, automatable: no, technical impact: total).
  3. Record last changed materially (score, affected products, status or references).

References

Patches and release notes

Other vulnerabilities in Rancher

All Rancher vulnerabilities

Recent Unintended Proxy or Intermediary vulnerabilities

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