CVE-2025-23208

HighPublic PoC

Published: 17 January 2025

Published

17 January 2025

Modified

04 March 2025

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

EPSS Score 0.0011 28.4th percentile

Risk Priority 15 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-23208 is a high-severity Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269) vulnerability in Zotregistry Zot. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 28.4th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-2 (Account Management) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) and 1 other technique. What defenders deploy: see the NIST 800-53 controls recommended below.

Threat & Defense Details

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match

prevent

Directly mitigates the code flaw in zot's SetUserGroups function by requiring identification, reporting, and correction through timely patching to version 2.1.2.

AC-2 Account Management good match

prevent

Mandates proper management, assignment, and revocation of user group memberships to ensure IdP revocations are enforced and unauthorized access is prevented.

AC-3 Access Enforcement partial match

prevent

Requires access enforcement mechanisms to restrict logical access based on current, accurate group authorizations, addressing the API's failure to respect group removals.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1078 Valid Accounts Stealth

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

Vulnerability in public-facing OCI registry (zot) allows network exploitation without privileges to bypass group-based authorization revocations, enabling abuse of valid accounts for unauthorized access.

Confidence: MEDIUM · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1

NVD Description

zot is a production-ready vendor-neutral OCI image registry. The group data stored for users in the boltdb database (meta.db) is an append-list so group revocations/removals are ignored in the API. SetUserGroups is alled on login, but instead of replacing the…

group memberships, they are appended. This may be due to some conflict with the group definitions in the config file, but that wasn't obvious to me if it were the case. Any Zot configuration that relies on group-based authorization will not respect group remove/revocation by an IdP. This issue has been addressed in version 2.1.2. All users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2025-23208 is a vulnerability in zot, a production-ready vendor-neutral OCI image registry, published on 2025-01-17. It stems from improper handling of user group data in the boltdb database (meta.db), where groups are stored as an append-list, causing revocations or removals to be ignored by the API. Upon login, the SetUserGroups function appends new group memberships rather than replacing existing ones, potentially due to conflicts with config file group definitions. This breaks group-based authorization in any zot configuration dependent on Identity Provider (IdP) revocations, rated at CVSS 7.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L) and mapped to CWE-269.

The vulnerability enables network-accessible attackers requiring no privileges to exploit it with low complexity and no user interaction. A user whose group access has been revoked by an IdP can log in and retain prior group memberships, as they are appended without removal, allowing continued unauthorized access to registry resources and bypassing intended controls for low impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The issue is fixed in zot version 2.1.2, with users advised to upgrade immediately, as no workarounds exist. Details appear in the project-zot/zot security advisory at GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx, the patching commit 002ac62d8a15bf0cba010b3ba7bde86f9837b613, and affected code at pkg/meta/boltdb/boltdb.go line 1665.