CVE-2026-44882: portainer Auth Bypass — Exploit

Description

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.

Is your site exposed to CVE-2026-44882?

Run a free security scan — no signup, results in seconds.

CVSS v3.1 Score

8.1

HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS — Exploit Prediction

0.0029

Probability of exploitation

0.21%

Percentile rank

EPSS estimates the probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. A higher score means more likely to be exploited.

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Versions
portainer	portainer	2.33.0 — 2.33.8

References

Exploits

https://github.com/portainer/portainer/security/advisories/GHSA-mgq6-4x29-88r3

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-44882? +

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. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.1 (HIGH).

How severe is CVE-2026-44882? +

CVE-2026-44882 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 8.1 out of 10, rated HIGH. This is a high-severity vulnerability that should be prioritized for patching. The EPSS score is 0.0029, placing it in the 0th percentile for exploitation probability.

What products are affected by CVE-2026-44882? +

CVE-2026-44882 affects products from portainer, specifically: portainer. Check the affected products table above for specific version ranges.

How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-44882? +

You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

Related Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-84355

Incorrect authorization in Navigation in Google Chrome prior to 152.0.7977.75 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process …

CVE-2026-65601

Traefik versions 3.7.0 through 3.7.6 contain a namespace confusion vulnerability in the Kubernetes Gateway API provider. When resolving HTTPRoute.spec.rules[].backendRefs[].filters[].extensionRef, Traefik …

CVE-2026-50008

Parse Server is an open source backend that can be deployed to any infrastructure that can run Node.js. From version …

CVE-2026-15829

A SQL injection (CWE-89) and security boundary bypass (CWE-863) vulnerability exists in the prebuilt BigQuery forecasting tool (bigquery-forecast) of googleapis/mcp-toolbox. …

CVE-2026-42571

Pelican is a platform for creating data federations. From versions 7.21.0 to before 7.21.5, 7.22.0 to before 7.22.3, 7.23.0 to …

CVE-2026-42137

Kirby is an open-source content management system. Prior to versions 4.9.0 and 5.4.0, `pages.access/list` and `files.access/list` permissions are not consistently …

CVE-2026-44882