CVE-2026-79411 in Bagisto
Summary
by MITRE • 09/15/2026
Incorrect privilege assignment in the admin user-management component of Webkul Bagisto 2.4.9 allows an authenticated backend user holding only the settings.users.edit permission to escalate to full administrator. The user-update endpoint (route admin.settings.users.update, UserController::update()) does not verify that the actor is permitted to grant the requested role, does not prevent a user from changing their own role, and does not restrict assignment to roles whose permission set is a subset of the actor's own. By submitting a request that sets role_id to the Administrator role for their own account, a low-privileged administrator gains every admin-panel capability, including store configuration, payment gateway credentials, and customer PII.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/15/2026
The vulnerability identified in Webkul Bagisto version 2.4.9 represents a critical failure in access control mechanisms within the administrative user management subsystem. Specifically, this flaw manifests as an incorrect privilege assignment that allows for vertical privilege escalation from a standard administrator role to full super-administrator status. The core of the issue lies in the implementation of the user-update endpoint, which corresponds to the route admin.settings.users.update and is handled by the UserController::update method. This component is responsible for modifying existing user profiles and their associated roles within the application's backend interface. While the system implements a permission-based access control model where users must hold specific permissions such as settings.users.edit to modify other accounts, it fails to enforce strict boundaries on what changes can be made regarding role assignments.
The technical flaw stems from three distinct logical errors in the authorization logic of the update endpoint. First, the application does not verify whether the requesting actor possesses the necessary authority to grant or assign specific roles to another user. Second, there is no restriction preventing a user from modifying their own role assignment, which creates a self-elevation vector. Third, and most critically for this escalation path, the system fails to restrict the assignment of roles whose permission sets are supersets of the actor's current permissions. In standard secure implementations, an administrator should only be able to assign roles that have equal or fewer privileges than their own, ensuring that privilege levels cannot increase through user management operations. By omitting these checks, the application allows any authenticated backend user with edit access to arbitrarily change role identifiers in database records without validating if such a change is permissible under the security policy.
This vulnerability enables an attacker who has obtained low-privileged administrative credentials to escalate their privileges to those of a full administrator by submitting a crafted HTTP request that sets the role_id field to the identifier associated with the Administrator role for their own account ID. Once this escalation is successful, the attacker gains unrestricted access to all admin-panel capabilities. This includes the ability to modify critical store configurations, view and potentially exfiltrate sensitive payment gateway credentials stored in plaintext or weakly encrypted formats, and access personally identifiable information of customers such as names, addresses, email addresses, and purchase histories. The impact is severe because it compromises the integrity of the entire e-commerce platform, allowing for data theft, financial fraud through manipulation of transaction settings, and potential defacement or further exploitation of connected systems.
From a classification perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-269, which denotes Improper Privilege Management, specifically highlighting the failure to enforce role-based access control constraints during privilege assignment operations. It also maps directly to MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078, Valid Accounts, as it involves using legitimate credentials to gain higher-level access, and more precisely relates to lateral movement or escalation within a single host environment by exploiting misconfigured permissions rather than traditional network pivoting. The lack of validation against the actor's own permission set is a classic example of an insecure direct object reference combined with broken access control logic that fails to check authorization levels for specific actions.
Mitigation strategies must focus on implementing robust server-side authorization checks within the UserController::update method. Developers should enforce strict role hierarchy rules, ensuring that a user can only assign roles that are equal to or lower in privilege level than their own current role. Additionally, the system must explicitly prevent users from modifying their own role_id field unless they have super-administrator privileges, which typically require multi-factor authentication or explicit approval workflows for such high-risk changes. Input validation should also be applied to ensure that only predefined, valid role identifiers are accepted, preventing potential injection attacks alongside privilege escalation. Regular security audits and static code analysis focused on access control logic can help identify similar flaws in other parts of the application before they reach production environments.