OpenSSL
CVE-2026-33503
HIGH
GHSA-hgx2-28f8-6g2r
Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary rating from GitHub Advisory.
CVSS VectorGitHub Advisory
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Lifecycle Timeline
4DescriptionGitHub Advisory
Description
The ListCourierMessages Admin API in Ory Kratos is vulnerable to SQL injection due to flaws in its pagination implementation.
Pagination tokens are encrypted using the secret configured in secrets.pagination. An attacker who knows this secret can craft their own tokens, including malicious tokens that lead to SQL injection. If this configuration value is not set, Kratos falls back to a default pagination encryption secret. Because this default value is publicly known, attackers can generate valid and malicious pagination tokens manually for installations where this secret is not set.
Preconditions
This issue can be exploited when the following conditions are met:
- ListCourierMessages API is directly or indirectly accessible to the attacker
- The attacker can pass a raw pagination token to the affected API
- The configuration value
secrets.paginationis not set or known to the attacker
Impact
An attacker can execute arbitrary SQL queries through forged pagination tokens.
Mitigation
As a first line of defense, immediately configure a custom value for secrets.pagination by generating a cryptographically secure random secret, for example:
openssl rand -base64 32Next, upgrade Kratos to a fixed version as soon as possible.
AnalysisAI
Ory Kratos, an open-source identity and user management system, contains a SQL injection vulnerability in its ListCourierMessages Admin API through malicious pagination tokens. Attackers who know or can exploit the default pagination encryption secret can craft tokens to execute arbitrary SQL queries against the backend database. The vulnerability requires high privileges (PR:H) but is network-exploitable (AV:N) with low complexity (AC:L), scoring CVSS 7.2.
Technical ContextAI
The vulnerability affects Ory Kratos (pkg:go/github.com_ory_kratos), a Go-based identity management solution. The root cause is CWE-89 (SQL Injection) in the pagination token handling mechanism of the ListCourierMessages Admin API. Pagination tokens are encrypted using a secret configured in 'secrets.pagination', but when this value is not set, Kratos falls back to a publicly known default encryption secret. Because the encryption secret can be known or guessed, attackers can forge pagination tokens containing SQL injection payloads that are decrypted and executed without proper sanitization. This represents a classic case of insufficient input validation combined with insecure default configuration, where the application trusts user-controlled data (the pagination token) after decryption without validating its content for SQL metacharacters.
RemediationAI
Immediately configure a custom cryptographically secure random secret for the secrets.pagination configuration value using a command such as 'openssl rand -base64 32' to generate a 32-byte random secret. This mitigation prevents attackers from forging pagination tokens even before upgrading. Next, upgrade Ory Kratos to the latest patched version as soon as possible, with specific version information available in the official security advisory at https://github.com/ory/kratos/security/advisories/GHSA-hgx2-28f8-6g2r. As additional defense-in-depth measures, restrict network access to the ListCourierMessages Admin API to only trusted administrative networks or IP ranges, implement strong authentication and authorization controls for Admin API access, and monitor database query logs for suspicious SQL patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts.
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View allVendor StatusVendor
SUSE
Severity: High| Product | Status |
|---|---|
| openSUSE Leap 15.6 | Fixed |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Package Hub 15 SP5 | Fixed |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Module for Package Hub 15 SP6 | Fixed |
| openSUSE Leap 15.5 | Fixed |
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External POC / Exploit Code
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