CVE-2026-59093
Weaviate before 1.38.0 does not verify that a principal performing an RBAC role assignment holds the permissions granted by the assigned role. The assignRoleToUser and assignRoleToGroup handlers (POST /authz/users/{id}/assign and /authz/groups/{id}/assign) authorize only that the caller may assign roles to the target user or group, not the permissions contained in the assigned roles, unlike role creation which enforces that a user can only create roles with permissions less than or equal to its own. A user holding only the delegated assign_and_revoke_users or assign_and_revoke_groups permission can assign the built-in admin role, or any high-privilege custom role, to itself or others, escalating to full administrative control of the database.
What this means
- Exposure
- Exploitable remotely over the network, with an ordinary user account and with no action from the victim.
- Impact
- An attacker can read sensitive data, modify or destroy data and take the service offline.
- Weakness
- A privilege is granted in error, beyond what the role warrants.
- Likelihood
- Its EPSS score stays low: nothing points to imminent exploitation, which is no reason to leave it unpatched.
What to doFold into the next patch cycle.
Read automatically from the CVSS vector, the weakness type (CWE) and the EPSS score. The technical description above remains the one published by NIST.