CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-27134

Improper Access Control

Published: Apr 30, 2025 | Modified: Apr 30, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. Prior to version 3.3.3, a privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the Joplin server, allowing non-admin users to exploit the API endpoint PATCH /api/users/:id to set the is_admin field to 1. The vulnerability allows malicious low-privileged users to perform administrative actions without proper authorization. This issue has been patched in version 3.3.3.

Weakness

The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor.

Extended Description

Access control involves the use of several protection mechanisms such as:

When any mechanism is not applied or otherwise fails, attackers can compromise the security of the product by gaining privileges, reading sensitive information, executing commands, evading detection, etc. There are two distinct behaviors that can introduce access control weaknesses:

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References