Summary
Rancher has Privilege Escalation from Project Owner to Host
Workarounds
If upgrading is not immediately possible, administrators should create a custom project role based on the existing Project Owner role, while removing unrestricted wildcard permissions for project resources.
The allowed verbs for projects should be restricted to: “get, update, delete, patch, create, list, watch, deletecollection” instead of “*”.
This prevents access to the updatepsa capability that enables the privilege escalation path.
References
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 in Rancher Manager that allows users assigned the Project Owner role to modify Pod Security Admission (PSA) labels on namespaces within their projects. Under the default role configuration, an attacker with the following access pattern can exploit this issue:
- Cluster Access: The user is granted Cluster Member access.
- Project Ownership: The user creates or is assigned ownership of a project.
- Namespace Creation: The user creates a namespace within that project.
- PSA Modification: The user modifies the namespace PSA configuration to use the privileged profile.
- Privilege Escalation: The user deploys privileged workloads within the namespace.
As outlined in the Kubernetes Pod Security Standards documentation, privileged containers disable core Kubernetes security protections, allowing workloads to bypass standard container isolation boundaries. This can result in privilege escalation within the cluster environment.
Potential impacts include:
- Deployment of privileged containers
- Access to host-level resources
- Container breakout
- Cluster privilege escalation
- Compromise of workloads running on affected nodes
Please refer to the associated MITRE ATT&CK techniques for further information about this category of attack:
Reference:
Kubernetes Pod Security Standards, Privileged Profile
CVE-2026-41052 has a CVSS score of 8.4 (Critical). The vector is network-reachable, high privileges required, and user interaction required. 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 (2.14.2, 2.13.6, 2.12.10, 0.0.0-20260513182521-2800aaac25b5); 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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This vulnerability is resolved by modifying the project-owner role to explicitly define the allowed verbs for projects resources instead of using the wildcard (*) permission.
The updated role configuration removes access to the updatepsa verb. This prevents project owners from modifying PSA settings in a manner that could enable privilege escalation.
Patched versions of Rancher include releases v2.12.10, v2.13.6, and v2.14.2.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2026-41052? CVE-2026-41052 is a critical-severity security vulnerability in github.com/rancher/rancher (go), affecting versions >= 2.14.0, < 2.14.2. It is fixed in 2.14.2, 2.13.6, 2.12.10, 0.0.0-20260513182521-2800aaac25b5.
- How severe is CVE-2026-41052? CVE-2026-41052 has a CVSS score of 8.4 (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-2026-41052? github.com/rancher/rancher (go) versions >= 2.14.0, < 2.14.2 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-41052? Yes. CVE-2026-41052 is fixed in 2.14.2, 2.13.6, 2.12.10, 0.0.0-20260513182521-2800aaac25b5. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2026-41052 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-41052 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-2026-41052 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-2026-41052?
- Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 2.14.2 or later - Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 2.13.6 or later - Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 2.12.10 or later - Upgrade
github.com/rancher/rancherto 0.0.0-20260513182521-2800aaac25b5 or later
- Upgrade