CVE-2026-44945NVD

Vulnerability Summary

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.

Severity Level

CRITICAL(9.1)

Published Date

Aug 5, 2026

Last Modified

Sep 1, 2026

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation yet

EPSS Score (30-Day)

0.56%Probability

Root Weakness (CWE)

CWE-441: Unknown/Unlisted Weakness ↗

Refer to the official MITRE database for detailed architectural specifications regarding this weakness.

CWE-497: Unknown/Unlisted Weakness ↗

Refer to the official MITRE database for detailed architectural specifications regarding this weakness.

CVSS v3.1 Base Metrics — Score 9.1 (CRITICAL)

Attack VectorNetwork

Attack ComplexityLow

Privileges RequiredHigh

User InteractionNone

ScopeChanged

ConfidentialityHigh

IntegrityHigh

AvailabilityHigh

Affected & Patched Versions

Affected Versions

Not provided by NVD for this CVE.

Patched Versions

Not provided by NVD for this CVE.

🎁7-Day Free Trial — Try Pro or Team, no card required.

📧Email Delivery — Threat intel straight to your inbox.

♾️Unlimited Vendors — Track your entire stack.

🚨All New CVEs — Be the first to know.

📈EPSS Spike Alerts — Catch rising risk before it peaks.

🎯Custom EPSS/CVSS — Filter noise, focus on risk.

🛡️Exploit Intel — A 2nd confirmed-exploit signal beyond KEV.

🐙GitHub Issues — Auto-tracked, no duplicates.

📬Weekly Digest — One clean summary, not inbox spam.

🏷️Watchlist Groups — Tag alerts by team (Infra/AppSec/SOC).

💬Webhooks — Slack & Teams integration.

🔀Smart Routing — Critical alerts to one channel, rest to another.

🚫Ad-Free — Uninterrupted experience.