GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf
HIGHGHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) CWE-295 vulnerability in github.com/harvester/harvester. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Harvester's SUSE Virtualization Registration Client Vulnerable to MITM and DOS
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf.
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-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf 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 0 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/harvester/harvesterReal-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 in the SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) Rancher integration mechanism where by default the registration client uses an insecure TLS option that fails to verify the remote server’s certificate. This security gap could allow the execution of a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack against SUSE Virtualization.
An attacker with network-level access between the SUSE Virtualization and Rancher Manager could interfere with the TLS handshake and abuse it to bypass TLS as a security control. The registration client could be misled to send cluster registration requests to an impersonated remote service. Additionally, because the system processes response payloads without performing size validation, an attacker could induce a memory buffer overflow, leading to a potential crash of the SUSE Virtualization registration controller.
Note that this vulnerability only affects the cluster registration configuration (the cluster-registration-url setting) which is distinct from the secured configuration used to maintain operational connectivity between SUSE Virtualization and Rancher Manager, as well as between the manager and hosted downstream clusters.
Please consult the associated MITRE ATT&CK - Technique - Adversary-in-the-Middle and MITRE ATT&CK - Technique - Endpoint Denial of Service: Application or System Exploitation for further information about this category of attack.
Patches
This vulnerability is addressed by updating the registration client’s default behaviour to validate the certificate presented by the remote server against the list of trusted system root certificate authority (CA) and those defined by the additional-ca setting.
Patched versions of SUSE Virtualization include releases v1.8.0 or newer.
Workarounds
If developers can't upgrade to a fixed version, ensure that only authorized cluster administrators can access and modify the cluster-registration-url setting.
Resources
If there are 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 SUSE support matrix and product support lifecycle.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/harvester/harvester | all versions | 1.8.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/harvester/harvester. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update github.com/harvester/harvester to 1.8.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf. 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-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-pgh9-mpwc-8jjf across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.