RCE in Arcane

CVE-2026-23520

Arcane provides modern docker management. Prior to 1.13.0, Arcane has a command injection in the updater service. Arcane’s updater service supported lifecycle labels com.getarcaneapp.arcane.lifecycle.pre-update and com.getarcaneapp.arcane.lifecycle.post-update that allowed defining a command to run before or after a container update. The label value is passed directly to /bin/sh -c without sanitization or validation. Because any authenticated user (not limited to administrators) can create projects through the API, an attacker can create a project that specifies one of these lifecycle labels with a malicious command. When an administrator later triggers a container update (either manually or via scheduled update checks), Arcane reads the lifecycle label and executes its value as a shell command inside the container. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.13.0.

Vulnerability class: Command Injection (OS Command Injection)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.0 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.018 (78.9th percentile), scored .

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 79th percentile — 78.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-23520: held from 0.019 to 0.018.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.019 · newest: 0.018 · change: -0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-23520?
CVE-2026-23520 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Arcane, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 9.0/10. Published 2026-01-15.
How severe is CVE-2026-23520?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.0 out of 10.
Is CVE-2026-23520 known to be exploited?
5 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.