High severity · published Aug 5, 2026
CVE-2026-55997
Long-lived Rancher registration token exposed in plaintext
8.8
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Rancher issues long-lived registration tokens to authenticate nodes and agents joining a downstream cluster. These tokens were stored and exposed in plaintext with no expiration, so a malicious user could obtain one either through the Rancher API, etcd, stored automation, or direct file access on a node, and could use it at any time to register a rogue node into the cluster.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 1% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
RA
rancher · rancher
2.14.0 before 2.14.4; 2.13.0 before 2.13.8 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55997
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-55997
bugzilla.suse.com
https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2026-55997
github.com
https://github.com/rancher/rancher/security/advisories/GHSA-7r53-jvhg-9jq4
More from rancher
9.9
CVE-2021-25320
A Improper Access Control vulnerability in Rancher, allows users in the cluster to make request to cloud providers by creating requests with the cloud-credential ID
8.8
CVE-2021-36776
A Improper Access Control vulnerability in SUSE Rancher allows remote attackers impersonate arbitrary users
8.8
CVE-2021-36775
a Improper Access Control vulnerability in SUSE Rancher allows users to keep privileges that should have been revoked
8.8
CVE-2021-31999
A Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision vulnerability in Rancher allows users in the cluster to act as others users in the cluster by forging the "Impersonate-User"…
8.8
CVE-2021-25318
A Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource vulnerability in Rancher allows users in the cluster to modify resources they should not have access to