CVE-2026-111603 in PlayEdu
Summary
by MITRE • 10/16/2026
PlayEdu through 2.3 contains a missing authorization vulnerability in the CourseController that allows authenticated students to access department-restricted courses by omitting the department visibility check. Attackers can enumerate sequential course and attachment IDs via the course details and attachment download endpoints to obtain course structure and attachment files from other departments.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/17/2026
The identified vulnerability represents a critical failure in server-side access control mechanisms within the PlayEdu learning management system, specifically affecting versions up through 2.3. This flaw is categorized under CWE-862, which denotes Missing Authorization, as the application fails to enforce proper checks on user permissions before granting access to sensitive resources. The root cause lies within the CourseController component of the backend architecture, where the logic governing course visibility does not adequately validate whether an authenticated student has explicit permission to view or interact with courses belonging to departments other than their own. In a properly secured system, every request for restricted data must be cross-referenced against the user's role and associated departmental boundaries before any database query is executed or file stream is initiated.
The technical execution of this exploit relies on the application’s reliance on sequential identifiers for course and attachment resources. Because the vulnerability allows authenticated students to bypass the department visibility check, an attacker can systematically iterate through predictable integer values representing Course IDs and Attachment IDs via standard HTTP endpoints such as those used for retrieving course details or downloading files. This process constitutes a form of Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR), aligning with CWE-639. By incrementally requesting resources with sequential identifiers, the attacker can effectively enumerate the entire catalog of courses available within the system, regardless of their departmental affiliation. The lack of randomization in these IDs significantly lowers the barrier to entry for this attack, allowing even low-skilled adversaries to automate the discovery process using simple scripts or browser extensions.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is substantial, as it compromises both the confidentiality and integrity of institutional data structures. Through successful enumeration, an attacker can map out the complete course structure across all departments, revealing curriculum layouts, module organization, and potentially sensitive administrative metadata that should remain internal to specific academic units. Furthermore, the ability to download attachment files means that proprietary educational materials, such as lecture slides, exam papers, research datasets, or graded student submissions from other classes, can be exfiltrated. This exposure not only violates privacy regulations regarding student data but also undermines the intellectual property rights of instructors and institutions who rely on restricted access controls to maintain academic integrity and competitive advantage in course content distribution.
To mitigate this vulnerability, immediate remediation efforts must focus on implementing robust authorization checks at the controller level for all endpoints related to course retrieval and file downloads. Developers should ensure that every request verifies not only that the user is authenticated but also that they possess explicit permission tied to their specific department or enrollment status before returning data. This involves modifying the CourseController logic to include a secondary validation step that compares the requested resource’s associated department ID against the authorized departments of the requesting user account. Additionally, replacing sequential integer IDs with universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) can significantly hinder enumeration attacks by removing predictability from the resource addresses. Implementing rate limiting on these endpoints will also help mitigate automated scanning attempts while longer-term architectural changes are deployed to enforce strict role-based access control policies consistent with industry standards such as NIST SP 800-53 and OWASP Access Control guidelines.