Docker Hub flaw let attackers impersonate users and tamper with their images

Docker published an advisory on October 12, 2026, on CVE-2026-105445, a Docker Hub vulnerability it rates as critical. It existed from August 26, 2024, to September 30, 2026. It allowed an attacker to act on the registry as another user, and therefore potentially to publish booby-trapped images under a legitimate name. Docker says it found no evidence of exploitation.

How it worked

When a personal account was converted into an organization, its personal access tokens (PATs) were transferred to the person designated as the new owner. The secret was not rotated, and that person was neither consulted nor notified. An attacker could therefore create an account, generate a token, convert the account into an organization and designate their target as the owner. They then kept a token that acted as the target on the registry.

Depending on the permissions of the token and of the victim, the attacker could pull, publish or delete images in the target's repositories and in the organizations the target had access to. However, the attacker had no access to the web interface and could not change the password, the email address or the two-factor authentication.

Fix and investigation

Researchers Peter Molnar and Krisztian Hozak reported the flaw on September 30. Docker fixed it the same day, in under four hours according to its timeline. Exposed users were notified by email on October 2, and the transferred tokens were disabled on October 8, unless their owners had asked to keep them. Docker reviewed about 304,000 image pushes made with these tokens: all of them landed in the converted organization's repositories or in those of the new owner. The company also analyzed, without running them, the most sensitive public images, and found no malicious code. It notes that its logs keep no record of tokens that were never used.

What to do

• If you did not receive Docker's email of October 2, your account was not exposed, according to the company.
• In any case, review your tokens (Account settings, then Personal access tokens) and revoke any you do not recognize or no longer use.
• For automation, prefer organization access tokens over personal ones.
• For your critical images, check the digests and consider signing your images.