CVE-2026-88810
Privilege escalation in downstream clusters via GlobalRole inheritedNamespacedRules
What happened?
A privilege escalation issue was discovered in Rancher Manager's role-based access control. The inheritedNamespacedRules field of a GlobalRole propagates permissions into named namespaces of every downstream cluster managed by the Rancher instance, but it was not subject to the privilege-escalation validation applied to the other permission-carrying fields of a GlobalRole. As a result, a non-administrative user could be granted, through a global role binding, permissions in downstream clusters that exceed the permissions that user already holds. This affected SUSE Rancher 2.15.2 only, and SUSE Rancher Webhook 0.11.0 up to 0.11.4, and 0.12.0 up to 0.12.1.
Affected software and versions
| Software | Version information | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| RancherSUSE | affected: 2.15.2 to < 2.15.3 | See vendor advisory |
| WebhookSUSE | affected: 0.11.0 to < 0.11.4; affected: 0.12.0 to < 0.12.1 | See vendor advisory |
Version information comes from the source record and can include unaffected products and exceptions. Distribution packages may contain backported fixes: an older upstream version alone does not prove a server is affected.
Is it being exploited?
This CVE was not listed in the CISA catalogue at our last retrieval. This does not establish that exploitation is absent.
How to respond
- Confirm the product, installed package version, and any configuration requirements in the vendor advisory.
- Follow the vendor’s remediation or workaround guidance in the references below. Structured fixed-version data is unavailable here; the publisher’s description may include a fix or workaround.
- Restart affected services if required, then verify the running version. Known exploitation may warrant investigation as well as patching.