PortainerApplication

CVE-2019-16874

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2019-11-07
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 1.22.1 or later.
See remediation →
71/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Portainer before 1.22.1 has Incorrect Access Control (issue 2 of 4).

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · moderate confidence

Portainer before version 1.22.1 contains an Incorrect Access Control vulnerability (issue 2 of 4). This allows authenticated users to potentially access resources or perform actions they should not be authorized for, likely due to missing or improper authorization checks on certain API endpoints or functions within the container management interface.

MitigationUpgrade Portainer to version 1.22.1 or later to obtain the corrected access control implementation. If immediate upgrade is not possible, restrict network access to the Portainer interface to trusted users only.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
PortainerApplication
Affected:< 1.22.1

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

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

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Verify Portainer is running
    Run 'docker ps' and look for a container named 'portainer' or 'portainer-ce'
    Affected if A Portainer container is present in the output
  2. Retrieve the Portainer version
    Run 'docker inspect <portainer_container_id> --format={{.Config.Image}}' to get the image tag, or access the Portainer API at /api/system/status to retrieve the Version field from the JSON response
    Affected if The version returned is below 1.22.1
  3. Confirm API access to Portainer
    Attempt to reach the Portainer web interface or API endpoint over the configured port (typically 9000 or 9443)
    Affected if Portainer is accessible and you can authenticate to the interface
  4. Check if authenticated users have elevated access
    Log in as a standard authenticated user and attempt to access API endpoints outside your apparent authorization scope, such as /api/endpoints or /api/users, to observe if unauthorized resources are returned
    Affected if A lower-privileged authenticated user can access resources or actions they should not be authorized for, indicating the access control flaw is present

You are affected if your Portainer version is below 1.22.1 and the application is accessible to authenticated users who may exploit the missing authorization checks.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Upgrade available Upgrade to 1.22.1 or later
Fixed in 1.22.1
Interim mitigation

Upgrade Portainer to version 1.22.1 or later to obtain the corrected access control implementation. If immediate upgrade is not possible, restrict network access to the Portainer interface to trusted users only.

Fix this in Portainer Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing3.0 h
  • Review / QA1.0 h
10.0 hours of engineering $1,750
Get the upgrade done

An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $2,800.

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2019-16874 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2019-16874 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data