The vulnerability is an authentication bypass in Portainer Community Edition up to and including version 2.44.0. It stems from the Docker proxy endpoint failing to normalize request paths before applying authorization checks. An attacker with a low‑privilege authenticated account can craft URLs that are interpreted differently by the proxy and the authorization middleware, allowing the attacker to access protected Docker resources. Successful exploitation results in unrestricted root access to the Docker host, compromising all containers and services running on that host.

Portainer Community Edition, versions up to 2.44.0. The attack applies to any deployment using the Docker proxy feature. No vendor‑specified additional constraints are provided.

The CVSS base score of 8.8 indicates a high‑severity flaw. Because the EPSS score is not available, the exact likelihood of exploitation remains unknown, but the absence of an EKV listing and the public disclosure on the Portainer GitHub repository suggest that attackers could reasonably target deployments lacking timely upgrades. Exploitation requires that the attacker is already authenticated with a low‑privilege user within the Portainer web interface and can send requests to the exposed proxy endpoint, typically from any machine that can reach the Portainer server. Once the crafted request bypasses authorization, the attacker can execute arbitrary Docker commands or mount the host filesystem as root.