CVE-2017-12635

Severity CVSS v4.0:

Pending analysis

Type:

CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

Publication date:

14/11/2017

Last modified:

20/04/2025

Description

Due to differences in the Erlang-based JSON parser and JavaScript-based JSON parser, it is possible in Apache CouchDB before 1.7.0 and 2.x before 2.1.1 to submit _users documents with duplicate keys for &#39;roles&#39; used for access control within the database, including the special case &#39;_admin&#39; role, that denotes administrative users. In combination with CVE-2017-12636 (Remote Code Execution), this can be used to give non-admin users access to arbitrary shell commands on the server as the database system user. The JSON parser differences result in behaviour that if two &#39;roles&#39; keys are available in the JSON, the second one will be used for authorising the document write, but the first &#39;roles&#39; key is used for subsequent authorization for the newly created user. By design, users can not assign themselves roles. The vulnerability allows non-admin users to give themselves admin privileges.

Impact

Vector 3.x

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H CVSS v3.1 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 9.80 CRITICAL
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector (AV): Network
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Privileges Required (PR): None
User Interaction (UI): None
Scope (S): Unchanged
Confidentiality (C): High
Integrity (I): High
Availability (A): High

Base Score 3.x

9.80

Severity 3.x

CRITICAL

Vector 2.0

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C CVSS v2.0 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 10.00 HIGH
Vector: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Attack Vector (AV): Network
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Authentication (Au): None
Confidentiality (C): Complete
Integrity (I): Complete
Availability (A): Complete

Base Score 2.0

10.00

Severity 2.0

HIGH

Vulnerable products and versions

CPE	From	Up to
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb::::::::		1.7.0 (excluding)
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:::::::*
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc1::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc2::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc3::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc4::::::

To consult the complete list of CPE names with products and versions, see this page

CPE	From	Up to
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb::::::::		1.7.0 (excluding)
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:::::::*
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc1::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc2::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc3::::::
cpe:2.3:a:apache:couchdb:2.0.0:rc4::::::

CVE-2017-12635

Description

Impact

Vulnerable products and versions

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools