CVE-2026-59093

high

Description

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.

References

https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/weaviate-privilege-escalation-via-unchecked-permissions-in-rbac-role-assignment

https://github.com/weaviate/weaviate/releases/tag/v1.38.0

https://github.com/weaviate/weaviate/pull/11493

https://github.com/weaviate/weaviate/commit/2c75f6fb217631f7751c4b2a7d37a488cef13edb

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-07-02

Updated: 2026-07-02

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

Severity: High

CVSS v3

Base Score: 8.8

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: High

CVSS v4

Base Score: 8.7

Vector: 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

Severity: High