Incorrect Authorization in CISA Malcolm
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Impact type
- Security bypass
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- Low · Low · None
- Fix status
- No fix listed
Attack profile from CVSS 4.0 · CNA. Fix status from CNA. Impact type from CWE-863.
Summary
Malcolm's nginx Lua role-based access control (RBAC) layer decides whether an authenticated user may reach a role-restricted path (e.g. /htadmin, /auth, /admin_login, /arkime/api/esadmin, NetBox, upload endpoints) by pattern-matching the raw, percent-encoded request URI. Nginx itself, however, selects which location block actually serves the request using the percent-decoded, normalized URI. Because the RBAC check never percent-decodes its input, an authenticated low-privilege user can request an admin-only path using percent-encoding (e.g. /%68tadmin.php) and have nginx route it to the restricted location while the Lua RBAC gate evaluating the un-decoded raw string finds no matching restriction and grants access.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- Poc
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
No fixed version listed by the sources yet.
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-19670
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-4887-2gc3-6j9r
References
More cisagov vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-45069 Malcolm has Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in Archive Extraction (Inode-Exhaustion DoS) CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.1
- TI-2026-15970 Improper handling of highly compressed data (data amplification) in CISA Malcolm CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.1
- TI-2026-45070 Malcolm's Path Traversal in Archive Extraction Allows Arbitrary Directory Creation CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 5.3
- TI-2026-40197 Malcolm vulnerable to RCE via unrestricted .php upload to the file-upload component CVSS 4.0HIGH 8.7
- TI-2026-45083 Malcolm Vulnerable to Authorization Bypass via URI Normalization Differential in Nginx Lua RBAC CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.1
Sources
- CVE-2026-19670 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-19670 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-4887-2gc3-6j9r · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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