SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2023-27486

All versions of xCAT prior to xCAT 2.16.5 are vulnerable.

HIGH 8.8EPSS 0.85%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.85%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

xCAT is a toolkit for deployment and administration of computer clusters. In versions prior to 2.16.5 if zones are configured as a mechanism to secure clusters in XCAT, it is possible for a local root user from one node to obtain credentials to SSH to any node in any zone, except the management node of the default zone. XCAT zones are not enabled by default. Only users that use the optional zone feature are impacted. All versions of xCAT prior to xCAT 2.16.5 are vulnerable. This problem has been fixed in xCAT 2.16.5. Users making use of zones should upgrade to 2.16.5. Users unable to upgrade may mitigate the issue by disabling zones or patching the management node with the fix contained in commit `85149c37f49`.

CVSS 3.1
8.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.85% probability · 57th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-863
Affected
xcat project/xcat
Source
security-advisories@github.com
EPSS trend
0%3%5%4 October 2026: 0.85%4 October 20264 October 2026

EPSS 0.9% since 4 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

References

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.