CVE-2026-55996Unauthenticated Denial-of-Service via TLS SAN Stuffing in Rancher and cattle-cluster-agent

A denial-of-service vulnerability was identified in multiple TLS listeners in Rancher. Both the cattle-cluster-agent component running in downstream clusters and the Rancher server itself use the dynamiclistener library to serve TLS traffic. Without an effective CN filter configured, dynamiclistener automatically appended to each serving certificate any hostname presented via Server Name Indication (SNI) in incoming TLS requests. An unauthenticated attacker with network access within the affected cluster could send a large number of TLS requests with distinct hostnames, causing the serving certificate to accumulate an unbounded number of Subject Alternative Names (SANs). Eventually, the certificate grows large enough that TLS handshakes fail with an excessive message size error, causing a denial of service on the affected listeners.

CVSS

4.3 MEDIUM (v3.1, CNA)CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-770

Known exploited

Not in CISA's KEV catalog

EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)

Not loaded for this CVE

Assigned by

suse

NVD analysis

Awaiting Analysis

Record last updated

Aug 5, 2026

First seen by InfoSec Signals

Oct 9, 2026

The CVE record on cve.org · NVD's entry

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