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GHSA-p976-h52c-26p6 CVE-2023-22647

Rancher vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via manipulation of Secrets

High Go
Severity
0.0 / 10
High · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS)
0.71%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 53.75% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-267 Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions
CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
Fix
2.6.13
Upgrade github.com/rancher/rancher to this version or later

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:

Affected versions

Go

PackageVulnerableFixed in
github.com/rancher/rancher
>= 2.6.0, < 2.6.13
2.6.13
github.com/rancher/rancher
>= 2.7.0, < 2.7.4
2.7.4

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

github.com/rancher/rancher Go → 2.6.13

go
go get github.com/rancher/rancher@v2.6.13 && go mod tidy

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 0.0

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

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Attack requirements
None
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
High
Integrity (vulnerable system)
High
Availability (vulnerable system)
High
Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
High
Integrity (subsequent systems)
High
Availability (subsequent systems)
High

CVSS 3.1 9.9

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Weakness

CWE-267: Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions

A particular privilege, role, capability, or right can be used to perform unsafe actions that were not intended, even when it is assigned to the correct entity.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design, Operation: Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
  • Architecture and Design, Operation: Run your code using the lowest privileges that are required to accomplish the necessary tasks [REF-76]. If possible, create isolated accounts with limited privileges that are only used for a single task. That way, a successful attack will not immediately give the attacker access to the rest of the software or its environment. For example, database applications rarely need to run as the database administrator, especially in day-to-day operations.

CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management

The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design, Operation: Very carefully manage the setting, management, and handling of privileges. Explicitly manage trust zones in the software.
  • Architecture and Design: Follow the principle of least privilege when assigning access rights to entities in a software system.
  • Architecture and Design: Consider following the principle of separation of privilege. Require multiple conditions to be met before permitting access to a system resource.

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-4j6x-2764-m8gh
Rancher has over-inclusive team membership expansion in GitHub App authentication provider
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GHSA-vx8h-4prv-g744
Rancher has Privilege Escalation from Project Owner to Host
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GHSA-mhc6-2gfq-xx62
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GHSA-5v3h-x4wf-5c35
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GHSA-gqf8-rvrh-g7w6
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Critical Also affects github.com/rancher/rancher
GHSA-hwm2-4ph6-w6m5
Rancher's restricted PodSecurityPolicy does not prevent containers from running as a privileged user
High Also affects github.com/rancher/rancher
GHSA-mc24-7m59-4q5p
Rancher CLI skips TLS verification on Rancher CLI login command
Medium Also affects github.com/rancher/rancher
GHSA-mw39-9qc2-f7mg
Rancher exposes sensitive information through audit logs
Medium Also affects github.com/rancher/rancher
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