CVE-2026-25497
Published: 09 February 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-25497 is a high-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key (CWE-639) vulnerability in Craftcms Craft Cms. Its CVSS base score is 8.6 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 34.0th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-25497 is a privilege escalation vulnerability in Craft CMS's GraphQL API, affecting versions from 4.0.0-RC1 up to but not including 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5.9.0-beta.1. The issue arises in the saveAsset GraphQL mutation, which validates authorization against the schema-resolved asset volume but fetches the target asset by ID without confirming it belongs to the authorized volume. This flaw, classified under CWE-639 (Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key), carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
An authenticated attacker with write access to at least one asset volume can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low complexity and no user interaction. By targeting the saveAsset mutation with an asset ID from a different volume, they can escalate privileges to modify or transfer assets belonging to any other volume, including restricted or private ones to which they lack access.
Craft CMS advisories and patches address the issue through validation fixes in the vulnerable GraphQL mutation. The vulnerability is resolved in Craft CMS versions 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5.9.0-beta.1, with related changes visible in the fix commit at https://github.com/craftcms/cms/commit/ac7edf868c1a81fd9c4dc49d3b3edf1cce113409, release notes for 5.8.22 at https://github.com/craftcms/cms/releases/tag/5.8.22, and the security advisory at https://github.com/craftcms/cms/security/advisories/GHSA-fxp3-g6gw-4r4v. Security practitioners should upgrade affected installations immediately.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-6846
Vulnerability details
Craft is a platform for creating digital experiences. In Craft versions from 4.0.0-RC1 to before 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5.9.0-beta.1, there is a Privilege Escalation vulnerability in Craft CMS’s GraphQL API that allows an authenticated user with write access to one asset…
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volume to escalate their privileges and modify/transfer assets belonging to any other volume, including restricted or private volumes to which they should not have access. The saveAsset GraphQL mutation validates authorization against the schema-resolved volume but fetches the target asset by ID without verifying that the asset belongs to the authorized volume. This allows unauthorized cross-volume asset modification and transfer. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5.9.0-beta.1.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Authorization bypass in public-facing GraphQL API (saveAsset mutation) allows authenticated attacker to escalate from limited asset volume access to unauthorized volumes/assets (CWE-639), directly enabling T1068 (Exploitation for Privilege Escalation) via T1190 (Exploit Public-Facing Application).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces approved authorizations in the GraphQL API to verify that fetched assets by ID belong to the schema-resolved authorized volume, preventing cross-volume privilege escalation.
Validates the user-supplied asset ID input in the saveAsset mutation against the authorized volume to block unauthorized modifications or transfers.
Requires timely remediation of flaws like the authorization bypass in Craft CMS's saveAsset GraphQL mutation, as fixed in versions 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5.9.0-beta.1.