CVE-2023-22647

CRITICAL9.9EPSS 0.85%

Rancher vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via manipulation of Secrets

Published: 6/6/2023Modified: 3/13/2026

Description

### Impact A vulnerability has been identified which enables [Standard users](https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/how-to-guides/new-user-guides/authentication-permissions-and-global-configuration/manage-role-based-access-control-rbac/global-permissions) or above to elevate their permissions to Administrator in the `local` cluster. The `local` cluster means the cluster where Rancher is installed. It is named `local` inside the list of clusters in the Rancher UI. Standard users could leverage their existing permissions to manipulate Kubernetes secrets in the `local` cluster, resulting in the secret being deleted, but their read-level permissions to the secret being preserved. When this operation was followed-up by other specially crafted commands, it could result in the user gaining access to tokens belonging to service accounts in the `local` cluster. Users that have custom global roles which grant `create` and `delete` permissions on `secrets` would also be able to exploit this vulnerability. Users with [audit logs enabled](https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/how-to-guides/advanced-user-guides/enable-api-audit-log#enabling-api-audit-log) in Rancher can try to identify possible abuses of this issue by going through the logs. To sieve through the data filter by `kind: Secret` with `type: provisioning.cattle.io/cloud-credential`, then investigate all log entries that affect that specific resource. A secondary check would be to filter by all operations with `Opaque` Secrets within the `cattle-global-data` namespace. After patching, it is recommended that users review access methods to Rancher (including RBAC policies, tokens, and host-level node access), to ensure that no changes were made to persist access to users who have leveraged this vulnerability. ### Patches Patched versions include releases `2.6.13`, `2.7.4` and later versions. ### Workarounds There is no direct mitigation besides updating Rancher to a patched version. ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: - Reach out to the [SUSE Rancher Security team](https://github.com/rancher/rancher/security/policy) for security related inquiries. - Open an issue in the [Rancher](https://github.com/rancher/rancher/issues/new/choose) repository. - Verify with our [support matrix](https://www.suse.com/suse-rancher/support-matrix/all-supported-versions/) and [product support lifecycle](https://www.suse.com/lifecycle/).

Affected packages (1)

CVSS scores

SourceVersionSeverityVector
osvCVSS 4.0—CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
osvCVSS 3.1CRITICAL9.9CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

References (6)