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Docker Says a Docker Hub Account-Conversion Flaw, CVE-2026-105445, Let Reassigned Personal Access Tokens Act as Other Users Until a September 30 Fix

Docker's advisory says account conversion reassigned personal access tokens to new owners from August 2024 until a September 30, 2026 fix; it reports no evidence of exploitation.

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Overview

Docker disclosed on October 12 a flaw in Docker Hub’s account-to-organization conversion feature, tracked as CVE-2026-105445, in which personal access tokens (PATs) of a converted account were reassigned to the person named as the new organization owner while the token secret stayed unchanged, according to Docker’s security advisory. Docker says it deployed a fix on September 30, 2026, and says it found no evidence the flaw was exploited. The post is written by Mark Lechner, whom the page lists as CISO.

What Docker says happened

Docker Hub has no way to move a repository from one account to another, and conversion into an organization is the workaround, the advisory says. During conversion the user names an existing account as the new organization’s owner.

Beginning August 26, 2024, conversion also re-assigned the converted account’s PATs to that new owner by changing the token’s owner record, without rotating or revoking the token secret, Docker says. The named owner “was not asked to confirm and was not notified,” according to the advisory. Docker’s described sequence is that an attacker creates an account and a PAT, converts the account into an organization naming a target user as owner, and the unchanged token then authenticates to the registry as that user.

Docker writes that “a re-assigned PAT acted as the target user at the registry level,” so an attacker “could potentially pull, push, and/or delete images” in the target’s repositories and in organizations where the target had access, within the token’s scope. Docker says it rated the flaw critical because that access includes “publishing images under a legitimate name.” The advisory also states the flaw did not give access to the Docker Hub web interface and could not change the target’s password, email address or two-factor settings.

Docker gives the exposure window as August 26, 2024, 20:33 UTC until the fix at approximately 19:10 UTC on September 30, 2026. The advisory prints that closing time in square brackets.

Rating and identifiers

The advisory states a critical rating but, on the page as read, gives no numeric score and no CWE. Those appear in the CVE Program record, published October 13 with Docker as the assigning CNA:

  • CVSS 4.0 base score 9.4, severity Critical, vector CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H. The vector lists low privileges required and no user interaction.
  • CWE-266, Incorrect Privilege Assignment.
  • Affected: Docker Hub, from 2024-08-26T20:33:00Z to before 2026-09-30T19:10:00Z.
  • Reporters credited: Peter Molnar and Krisztian Hozak, both of mptrdev.com.

The Hacker News also reports the 9.4 score and says that because Docker made the fix on Docker Hub itself, there is no update to install.

Timeline

Docker lists these times as U.S. Eastern, though two sentences in the advisory write “EST”:

  • September 30, 11:40 AM: report received. About 1:30 PM: Docker reproduced the issue internally. About 3:10 PM: fix deployed; Docker says it came less than four hours after receiving the report.
  • September 30, 4:59 PM: researchers informed of the fix, and both sides agreed to coordinate disclosure.
  • October 2, 5:30 PM: exposed users and their organization owners emailed.
  • October 8, 3:45 PM: transferred PATs deactivated, except where the account holder opted out.
  • October 12: advisory posted. October 13: CVE record published.

What Docker’s review found

Docker says it enumerated every conversion since August 26, 2024, and examined every push made with a transferred token, about 304,000. In its words, “We found no evidence that the vulnerability was exploited.” Docker says every such push landed in the converted organization’s repositories or the new owner’s repositories, and that in the large majority of cases both accounts belonged to the same person or team. For public images pushed after a conversion where it could not establish common control, Docker says static analysis found no malware or tampering.

Docker also states a limit: “registry logs show when a token is used, not that it exists, so a transferred token that was never used leaves no trace.” It therefore treated every PAT that moved through conversion in the window as potentially affected. The investigation section reports findings for pushes; it does not report separate findings for pulls or deletions. The Hacker News makes the same observation.

The researchers’ account

The researchers, who call the flaw GhostPat on their write-up, say they reproduced it twice independently, on September 28 and 29, using consenting test accounts. They report logging in as the target account, pushing to a repository in its namespace and in an organization it belonged to, and pulling the target’s private repositories. They also say no notification reached the target in their tests. Docker’s advisory phrases the same capability as something an attacker “could potentially” do.

The write-up also includes a section headed “Worst case (flagged, not confirmed)” that speculates about Docker’s Official Images. Docker’s advisory does not mention Official Images, and the write-up itself marks the scenario as unconfirmed.

The researchers recommended asking the receiver for explicit approval before a conversion completes. Docker says it is now requiring consent before a user is named an organization owner, notifying them, recording an auditable history of token ownership changes, and reviewing other flows that change credential ownership.

What we don’t know

Docker does not say how many users or tokens were involved, describing only a “limited number of users.” Its advisory does not report what it found for pulls or deletions. As of the advisory dated October 12 and the reports dated October 13, the sources describe the flaw as fixed; this has not been independently tested.

For users, Docker says anyone who did not receive the October 2 email was not exposed. It advises reviewing PATs under account settings, revoking unrecognized or unused ones, and using organization access tokens for organization automation.