Summary
Rancher vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via manipulation of Secrets
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.
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.
The application assigns, modifies, tracks, or checks privileges incorrectly, allowing a user to gain elevated access. Typical impact: privilege escalation beyond the intended level.
CVE-2023-22647 has a CVSS score of 9.9 (Critical). The vector is network-reachable, low privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (2.6.13, 2.7.4); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
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Patched versions include releases 2.6.13, 2.7.4 and later versions.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2023-22647? CVE-2023-22647 is a critical-severity improper privilege management vulnerability in github.com/rancher/rancher (go), affecting versions >= 2.6.0, < 2.6.13. It is fixed in 2.6.13, 2.7.4. The application assigns, modifies, tracks, or checks privileges incorrectly, allowing a user to gain elevated access.
- How severe is CVE-2023-22647? CVE-2023-22647 has a CVSS score of 9.9 (Critical). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of github.com/rancher/rancher are affected by CVE-2023-22647? github.com/rancher/rancher (go) versions >= 2.6.0, < 2.6.13 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2023-22647? Yes. CVE-2023-22647 is fixed in 2.6.13, 2.7.4. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2023-22647 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2023-22647 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2023-22647 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2023-22647?
- Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 2.6.13 or later - Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 2.7.4 or later
- Upgrade