CVE-2026-44882 | Portainer: Kubernetes middleware continues after token validation failure, bypassing endpoint authorization

Exp

Portainer Community Edition is a lightweight service delivery platform for containerized applications that can be used to manage Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes and ACI environments. From 2.33.0 to before 2.33., Portainer proxies requests to Kubernetes clusters through a middleware layer (kubeClientMiddleware) that validates the requesting user's token before forwarding traffic to the cluster. When security.RetrieveTokenData returned an error, the middleware wrote an HTTP 403 response but was missing a return statement — execution continued into the handler with a nil tokenData value. The Kubernetes endpoints sit behind Portainer's outer AuthenticatedAccess bouncer, so an attacker requires a valid Portainer session. However, a user whose secondary token validation fails in kubeClientMiddleware — for example a user without permission to access a given Kubernetes endpoint — would have their request forwarded to the cluster anyway, bypassing the authorization check. The same defect was present in both the CE and EE codebases. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.33.8.

Published: 2026-05-28 Last update: 2026-06-01 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Analyzed，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2026-44882 is rated Exploit Available (53.1/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.05%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2026-44882

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-44882

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-03 0.04% 0.05% +0.01%
2 2026-05-29 — 0.04% —

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-44882

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
8.1 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.8 5.2 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-44882

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2026-44882

GHSA-mgq6-4x29-88r3 · Severity: high · Ecosystem: go — Portainer's Kubernetes middleware continues after token validation failure, bypassing endpoint authorization

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-44882

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
portainer portainer >= 2.33.0, < 2.33.8 cpe:2.3:a:portainer:portainer:*:*:*:*:community:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-44882

cvelogic Threat Intelligence