CVE-2026-44945
CriticalCVSS 9.1Summary
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.
Risk Assessment
A low-privileged user can gain full control over the Rancher platform and all clusters, posing a serious threat to the security of the entire environment.
Recommendation
Immediately upgrade Rancher to version 2.11.16, 2.12.12, 2.13.8, or 2.14.2 to remediate the vulnerability.
Original NVD description (English source)
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.

