CVE-2026-91770 in IceHRM
Summary
by MITRE • 09/15/2026
IceHRM before 36.0.0 fails to validate employee ownership on seven REST sub-resource endpoints, allowing authenticated employees to read any colleague's HR records. Attackers can substitute arbitrary employee IDs in skill, education, certification, language, leave, attendance, and status endpoints to access sensitive personnel data.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/15/2026
The vulnerability identified in IceHRM versions prior to 36.0.0 represents a critical failure in server-side object reference validation within the application's REST API architecture. This flaw specifically affects seven distinct sub-resource endpoints related to employee profiles, including skill sets, educational history, certifications, language proficiencies, leave balances, attendance records, and general status information. The core technical deficiency lies in the absence of proper authorization checks that verify whether the authenticated user initiating the request is the legitimate owner of the requested data or possesses administrative privileges sufficient to view it. Instead of binding the resource identifier directly to the session context of the logged-in user, the application relies on a predictable and mutable parameter passed by the client side. This design oversight allows any authenticated employee to manipulate the input parameters associated with these endpoints, effectively bypassing access controls intended to isolate personnel data between different users within the organization.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability enables unauthorized horizontal privilege escalation where one user can read sensitive personal information belonging to another without authorization. By substituting arbitrary employee identifiers in the API requests, attackers can retrieve comprehensive HR records for any colleague in the system. This includes potentially sensitive details such as salary-related data inferred from leave and attendance patterns, educational background which may contain private institutions or degrees, certification histories relevant to professional standing, and language skills that could be used for social engineering attacks. The impact extends beyond simple privacy violations; it compromises the confidentiality of personally identifiable information (PII) stored within the human resources module, potentially violating data protection regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA depending on the jurisdiction and nature of the data held by the organization.
This type of vulnerability is formally classified under CWE-639, which describes Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key in a Web Application. It aligns with MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078, specifically Valid Accounts used for lateral movement or information gathering within an enterprise network environment. The exploitation vector requires only valid authentication credentials, making it accessible to any insider threat actor who has been granted basic access to the IceHRM platform. Such actors could be disgruntled employees seeking competitive intelligence, individuals attempting identity theft using harvested personal data, or external attackers who have compromised low-level user accounts through phishing or credential stuffing attacks. The lack of validation on these specific REST endpoints creates a significant blind spot in the application's security posture, as standard authentication mechanisms are satisfied while authorization logic is entirely circumvented.
Mitigation strategies must prioritize immediate patching to version 36.0.0 or later where this issue has been addressed by implementing strict ownership verification at the server level for all affected endpoints. In addition to updating software, organizations should enforce principle of least privilege in their API design, ensuring that resource access is always tied to the authenticated user's identity rather than client-supplied identifiers. Security testing procedures should include rigorous automated scanning for broken object level authorization flaws using tools capable of manipulating ID parameters during penetration tests. Furthermore, implementing robust logging and monitoring on these REST endpoints can help detect anomalous patterns such as rapid sequential requests targeting different employee IDs, which may indicate active exploitation attempts. Regular code reviews focusing on access control logic in backend services are essential to prevent similar vulnerabilities from being introduced in future development cycles.