CVE-2025-36857

Rapid7 Appspider Pro versions below 7.5.021, suffer from a broken access control vulnerability in the applications configuration file loading mechanism, whereby an attacker can place files in directories belonging to other users or projects. Affected versions allow standard users to add custom configuration files. These files, which are loaded in alphabetical order, can override or change the settings of the original configuration files, creating a security vulnerability. This issue stems from improper directory access management.

This vulnerability was remediated in version 7.5.021 of the product.

Weakness

During installation, installed file permissions are set to allow anyone to modify those files.

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.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/127.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/81.html

References

• https://docs.rapid7.com/insight/releasenotes-2025sep/#application-security-insightappsec-and-appspider