GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 — rancher
CRITICALGHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.9) CWE-267 vulnerability in github.com/rancher/rancher. A fix is available for github.com/rancher/rancher — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Rancher vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via manipulation of Secrets
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/rancher/rancher🐹github.com/rancher/rancherReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
A vulnerability has been identified which enables Standard users 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 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 for security related inquiries.
- Open an issue in the Rancher repository.
- Verify with our support matrix and product support lifecycle.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/rancher/rancher | ≥ 2.6.0&&< 2.6.13 | 2.6.13go get github.com/rancher/rancher@v2.6.13 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/rancher/rancher | ≥ 2.7.0&&< 2.7.4 | 2.7.4go get github.com/rancher/rancher@v2.7.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/rancher/rancher, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/rancher/rancher to 2.6.13 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.