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The vulnerability stems from an authorization flaw within ApostropheCMS where the specific `viewRole` check is correctly enforced for authenticated groups like guests and contributors, but fails to apply to the general public. Consequently, sensitive protected content types such as `@apostrophecms/user` can theoretically be queried and exposed. While this security risk is substantially mitigated because ApostropheCMS does not feature an automatic public REST API for any content type by default—requiring manual exposition—developers can inadvertently introduce architectural risks by creating improper schema relationships between public content types like blog posts and private user models. If application templates are written poorly and perform full object JSON-serialization, unauthenticated visitors might harvest sensitive profile data. Password hashes remain secure as they reside within a strictly isolated collection, but public demo projects or custom templates depending on this behavior must be carefully updated to prevent unexpected data leakage across system boundaries.
DailyCVE Form:
Platform: ApostropheCMS
Version: < 4.33.0
Vulnerability : Access Control Bypass
Severity: Low
date: 2026-10-20
Prediction: 2026-10-27
What Undercode Say:
To check your application packages and ensure relationships with `@apostrophecms/user` are not exposed, you can run the following npm and grep shell commands:
npm list apostrophe grep -rn "@apostrophecms/user" ./modules/
Here is a sample Node.js code snippet checking relationship definitions in schema configurations:
module.exports = {
fields: {
add: {
author: {
type: 'relationship',
withType: 'author-profile', // Use public piece type instead of user
idsField: 'authorIds'
}
}
}
};
Exploit: (Educational Purposes!)
An attacker probes public-facing REST endpoints or views containing serialized relationships tied to restricted content types. If a developer incorrectly configured a template to render entire linked user objects without filtering fields, an unauthenticated client sends a standard HTTP GET request to the blog post endpoint, causing the application to traverse the relationship and return restricted user schema details in the JSON response payload.
Protection: from this CVE
Upgrade the ApostropheCMS core package to version 4.33.0 or higher. Avoid creating direct schema relationships between public content types and `@apostrophecms/user` intended for non-admin display; instead, implement a dedicated public author piece type to securely represent content ownership.
Impact:
The vulnerability exposes sensitive user object attributes to unauthenticated public visitors if improper schema relationships and unsafe template serialization practices are combined, potentially leading to unauthorized data disclosure within affected Node.js web applications.
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Sources:
Reported By: github.com
Extra Source Hub:
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