Freedom of Press SecureDrop up to 2.16.0 Copy Task privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Freedom of Press SecureDrop up to 2.16.0 and classified as problematic. The affected element is an unknown function of the component Copy Task. Performing a manipulation results in privileges management. This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2026-71863. The attack is only possible with local access. There is not any exploit available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Freedom of Press SecureDrop up to 2.16.0. It has been classified as problematic. This affects an unknown part of the component Copy Task. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality. The summary by CVE is:

SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from, and communicate with anonymous sources. From 2.13.0 until 2.16.1, running the securedrop-admin install Ansible playbook with journalist alerts disabled leaves the journalist alert key filename empty, causing the copy task to transfer every file in ~/.config/securedrop-admin/, including Onion Service client authentication credentials, to the Monitor Server. An attacker must first compromise the privileged Monitor Server to obtain the credentials, and the credentials remain an additional protection layer rather than sufficient access by themselves because the Journalist Interface still requires a username, passphrase, and MFA, while SSH access still requires SSH keys. This issue is fixed in version 2.16.1.

The advisory is shared at github.com. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-71863 since 08/07/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. An attack has to be approached locally. The exploitation needs additional levels of successful authentication. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 2.16.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Freedom of Press

Name

• SecureDrop

Version

• 2.0
• 2.1
• 2.2
• 2.3
• 2.4
• 2.5
• 2.6
• 2.7
• 2.8
• 2.9
• 2.10
• 2.11
• 2.12
• 2.13
• 2.14
• 2.15
• 2.16.0

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

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