CVE-2022-29186: pagerduty rundeck Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key
Vulnerability summary
CVE-2022-29186 is a critical (CVSS 9.8) Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key vulnerability in pagerduty rundeck. EPSS estimates a 1.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 67.8% of scored vulnerabilities.
Timeline
- 20-05-2022PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
- 23-04-2025Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.
Description
Rundeck is an open source automation service with a web console, command line tools and a WebAPI. Rundeck community and rundeck-enterprise docker images contained a pre-generated SSH keypair. If the id_rsa.pub public key of the keypair was copied to authorized_keys files on remote host, those hosts would allow access to anyone with the exposed private credentials. This misconfiguration only impacts Rundeck Docker instances of PagerDuty® Process Automation On Prem (formerly Rundeck) version 4.0 and earlier, not Debian, RPM or .WAR. Additionally, the id_rsa.pub file would have to be copied from the Docker image filesystem contents without overwriting it and used to configure SSH access on a host. A patch on Rundeck's `main` branch has removed the pre-generated SSH key pair, but it does not remove exposed keys that have been configured. To patch, users must run a script on hosts in their environment to search for exposed keys and rotate them. Two workarounds are available: Do not use any pre-existing public key file from the rundeck docker images to allow SSH access by adding it to authorized_keys files and, if you have copied the public key file included in the docker image, remove it from any authorized_keys files.
CVSS metrics
3 scores · 2 sources · 2 versions- CVE.orgCNA9.1CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:NDiffers
EPSS trend
Probability
1.21%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days
Percentile
68%
Versus all other CVEs
30-day change
+0.02 pp
From 1.19% on 20-09-2026
Known exploited
Compare KEV catalogsNot in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.
Public exploits
0 foundNo public exploits indexed.
Weaknesses
CWE · root causeAffected systems
2 vendors · 2 products
References
2 links- github.com/rundeck/rundeck/security/advisories/GHSA-qxjx-xr2m-hgqxX Refsource CONFIRMThird Party Advisory
- github.com/rundeck/rundeck/commit/16ef7a70b202492f9fbb54d8af4bb8ea0afa10adX Refsource MISCPatchThird Party Advisory