Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessObtain admin.users-level credentials via phishing or reuse
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DeliveryAuthenticate to Grav admin panel
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ExploitPOST data[password] to /admin/user/{superadmin}?task=save
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ExecutionsaveUser() skips privilege-tier check and applies password
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PersistRe-authenticate as super admin
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ImpactAchieve full CMS control
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V8 - Authorization Object-level authorization, IDOR prevention
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| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires prior authentication to the Grav admin panel with an account that holds the admin.users permission - a subordinate administrative role used for user management below super-admin level. Without admin.users rights, the endpoint returns an authorization error. The target Grav deployment must also have at least one such subordinate admin account, a common configuration in multi-operator sites. The request is sent over the network to the Grav admin panel (AV:N); no user interaction from the victim is required. Super-admin accounts are unaffected as callers since they already possess the necessary rights legitimately. No special non-default configuration is required beyond the presence of a subordinate admin role - exploitation is limited primarily by the need to first compromise or be an admin.users-level account. |
| Impact | Real-world risk is meaningful within any multi-operator Grav deployment despite a low EPSS score of 0.21% (12th percentile), which reflects limited opportunistic scanning rather than low impact potential. The CVSS 4.0 score of 8.7 with PR:L correctly captures the authenticated prerequisite - the attacker must already hold admin.users rights - which bounds the at-risk population to deployments with subordinate admin roles. Within that population, exploitation is trivially simple: one HTTP POST, no brute force, no race condition (SSVC automatable: no is debatable given the single-step exploit path, though it may reflect the need for prior credential access). Even a mid-sized municipal IT team in sopot that delegates day-to-day user management to junior administrators should treat this as urgent, because any such operator can silently reset the super-admin password and assume full CMS control. SSVC technical impact is rated total, consistent with full administrative takeover. The absence of KEV listing and the low EPSS suggest mass opportunistic exploitation is unlikely at time of analysis; however, the exploit mechanics are effectively disclosed by the GHSA advisory and commit diff, making targeted abuse straightforward for any insider or attacker who has compromised a subordinate admin account. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker who has phished or reused credentials for a Grav account with admin.users rights authenticates to the admin panel and submits a POST to /admin/user/admin?task=save with data[password]=attacker_chosen_value. The saveUser() method applies the password change to the super-admin account without any privilege-tier check, and the attacker then logs in as super administrator with full CMS control. The exploit path is effectively documented in the public GHSA advisory and commit diff. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Sep 16, 2026
Privilege escalation in grav-plugin-admin ≤ 1.10.52 allows an authenticated attacker holding admin.users permission to take over any Grav account - including the super administrator - by sending a single crafted POST request to the user-save endpoint with a data[password] field. The saveUser() method in AdminController.php verifies that the caller holds user-management rights but never compares the caller's privilege tier against the target account's, enabling silent super-admin password replacement. SSVC marks exploitation as poc-level with total technical impact; vendor-released patch is version 1.10.53.
RemediationAI
Upgrade grav-plugin-admin to version 1.10.53, released 2026-06-20, which adds an authorization guard in saveUser() blocking non-super-admin callers from modifying accounts with access.admin.super or access.api.super privileges. The exact fix is in commit 88f7ce8e50324472f492965caa42fb709a4f791a in the grav-plugin-admin repository, referenced from GHSA-p97c-g455-q447. If an immediate upgrade is not feasible, the only effective workaround is to audit and revoke admin.users permissions from all accounts that do not require them, or to ensure no accounts with admin.users rights are held by parties who should not be able to modify super-admin credentials. No configuration toggle in versions ≤ 1.10.52 restricts the vulnerable endpoint; access-level controls on the account itself are the only compensating measure available prior to patching.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
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Technical ContextAI · show details
Grav is a flat-file CMS written in PHP; its administrative interface is delivered by the grav-plugin-admin package (CPE: cpe:2.3:a:getgrav:grav:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*). The root cause is CWE-639 (Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key), an IDOR pattern where the username in the URL path - /admin/user/{username}?task=save - acts as the unconstrained authorization target. The saveUser() method validates that the authenticated caller possesses admin.users access rights, but it performs no role-comparison between caller and target. Because cleanUserPost() does not strip the password field from the POST body, a data[password] value submitted by a subordinate admin is applied directly to the target account. The fix in commit 88f7ce8e503 adds an explicit guard: if the caller lacks admin.super and the target holds access.admin.super or access.api.super, the operation is rejected.
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Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
PR:L for required admin.users authentication; S:C because privilege escalates beyond the caller's scope to super-admin; A:N as no direct availability impact.
Primary rating from Vendor (GitHub_M).
CVSS VectorVendor: GitHub_M
DescriptionCVE.org
grav-plugin-admin is an HTML user interface that provides a way to configure Grav and create and modify pages. In 1.10.52 and earlier, an authenticated attacker with admin.users permission can change the password of any user account, including the super administrator, by sending a direct POST request to /admin/user/{username}?task=save with data[password] because saveUser authorizes the caller's user-management permission but does not verify whether the caller may edit the target user. This issue is expected to be fixed in version 1.10.53.
Executive ViewAI
Grav CMS admin plugin (versions ≤ 1.10.52) contains a privilege escalation flaw that allows any user with basic admin permissions to silently hijack any account, including super administrators, through a single API request. This directly threatens administrative control of the CMS and data integrity for all Grav-hosted organizations.
Apply vendor patch.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
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Remote code execution in Grav CMS 2.0.4 (fixed in 2.0.7) lets an authenticated user holding the admin.pages or api.pages
Remote code execution in Grav CMS before 2.0.15 allows attackers holding page-edit or blueprint-config privileges to wri
Vertical privilege escalation in Grav CMS before 2.0.14 lets a delegated administrator holding only the admin.users perm
Stored cross-site scripting in Grav CMS before 2.0.15 lets authenticated editors smuggle JavaScript event handlers past
Server-side request forgery (SSRF) in Grav CMS versions prior to 1.7.49.5 allows remote authenticated attackers to make
Grav is a file-based Web platform. Prior to 1.8.0-beta.27, Grav CMS is vulnerable to a Server-Side Template Injection (S
Remote code execution in Grav CMS before 2.0.13 allows authenticated low-privilege users to plant and execute arbitrary
EUVD-2026-42950
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
GitHub
VulDB
Exploit-DB