XWiki.WebHome vulnerable to Improper Privilege Management in XWiki resolving groups

Summary

XWiki Platform Old Core is a core package for XWiki Platform, a generic wiki platform. Starting in versions 11.3.7, 11.0.3, and 12.0RC1, it is possible to exploit a bug in XWikiRights resolution of groups to obtain privilege escalation. More specifically, editing a right with the object editor leads to adding a supplementary empty value to groups which is then resolved as a reference to XWiki.WebHome page. Adding an XWikiGroup xobject to that page then transforms it to a group, any user put in that group would then obtain the privileges related to the edited right. Note that this security issue is normally mitigated by the fact that XWiki.WebHome (and XWiki space in general) should be protected by default for edit rights. The problem has been patched in XWiki 13.10.4 and 14.2RC1 to not consider anymore empty values in XWikiRights. It's possible to work around the problem by setting appropriate rights on XWiki.WebHome page to prevent users to edit it.

Timeline

1. Sep 7, 2022, 2:10 PM UTCCVE published
2. Apr 22, 2025, 3:42 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

3. Apr 22, 2025, 5:23 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• xwiki xwiki-platform

  From 11.3.7 · fixed in 13.10.4; From 14.0-rc-1 · fixed in 14.2-rc-1

• org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-oldcoreMaven

  From 11.3.7 · fixed in 13.10.4

• org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-oldcoreMaven

  From 14.0-rc-1 · fixed in 14.2-rc-1

References 4