CVE-2026-101033 in KitchenOwl
Summary
by MITRE • 09/27/2026
KitchenOwl through 0.7.10 fails to verify that category IDs belong to the caller's household in expense and item operations. Authenticated attackers can enumerate category IDs from other households to read their category names, budgets, and colors, breaking household isolation.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/27/2026
The KitchenOwl application, specifically through version 0.7.10, contains a critical access control vulnerability that undermines the fundamental security principle of tenant isolation in multi-tenant environments. This flaw manifests as an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR), categorized under CWE-639, where the server-side logic fails to validate whether the resource identifier provided by the client actually belongs to the authenticated user's specific household context. The application relies on category identifiers for various expense and item management operations without enforcing strict ownership checks against the session or token data associated with the logged-in user. This architectural oversight allows any authenticated actor, regardless of their privilege level within a single household, to interact directly with resource endpoints using arbitrary numeric IDs rather than relying solely on context-aware queries that filter by household membership.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability enables unauthorized enumeration and information disclosure across household boundaries. An attacker can systematically iterate through sequential category identifiers or utilize fuzzing techniques to probe for valid entries belonging to other households within the same instance of KitchenOwl. Upon discovering a valid ID associated with another user's account, the application returns sensitive data including category names, allocated budget amounts, and visual configuration details such as color codes. This breaks the logical isolation between tenants, allowing one household to窥视 (peek into) the financial categorization structures of others. While the immediate impact described is read-only access to metadata, this information leakage can serve as reconnaissance for more severe attacks, potentially aiding in social engineering or targeted fraud if budget constraints are known by malicious actors within a shared community platform.
The security implications extend beyond simple data exposure. By exposing internal structural details like category names and budgets, the vulnerability compromises the confidentiality of financial planning strategies employed by other households. In a broader context, this aligns with MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078, specifically Valid Accounts or Default Accounts if default credentials are involved, but more accurately maps to T1539 Steal Web Session Cookie combined with IDOR patterns found in API exploitation chains. The lack of proper authorization checks at the business logic layer means that standard authentication mechanisms are insufficient to protect sensitive data resources. Attackers can automate this process using scripts to harvest large volumes of household-specific financial metadata, creating a significant privacy breach and potential compliance violation depending on the jurisdictional requirements for handling personal financial information.
To mitigate this vulnerability, developers must implement strict object-level authorization checks within all API endpoints that handle category-related operations. This involves ensuring that every request includes not only an authentication token but also explicit validation logic that cross-references the requested resource ID against a database table mapping resources to household IDs associated with the authenticated user's session. The application should return appropriate HTTP 403 Forbidden or 404 Not Found responses when access is denied, rather than exposing whether the object exists or not in a way that aids enumeration. Additionally, implementing rate limiting on these endpoints can help mitigate automated scanning attempts while longer-term fixes are deployed. Upgrading to patched versions of KitchenOwl where this logic has been corrected is the primary remediation step for end-users, ensuring that household isolation policies are enforced at both the database query level and the application business logic layer.