Authorship spoofing via unfiltered entry attributes
Published Mar 4, 2026 · Updated Mar 4, 2026
Authorization bypass in Craft CMS 4 before 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5 before 5.9.0-beta.1 allows remote authenticated users to spoof entry authorship. During entry creation, ElementsController and ElementIndexesController passed request-supplied authorId or authorIds values to generic attribute setters instead of filtering attributes allowed from editor submissions. The attacker needs Create Entries permission for a section and a target account ID, after which content can appear to come from an administrator or other trusted user.
Summary
What happened
Authorization bypass in Craft CMS 4 before 4.17.0-beta.1 and 5 before 5.9.0-beta.1 allows remote authenticated users to spoof entry authorship. During entry creation, ElementsController and ElementIndexesController passed request-supplied authorId or authorIds values to generic attribute setters instead of filtering attributes allowed from editor submissions. The attacker needs Create Entries permission for a section and a target account ID, after which content can appear to come from an administrator or other trusted user.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-28781
- Published
- Mar 4, 2026
- Updated
- Mar 4, 2026
- Vendor
- Pixel & Tonic
- Product
- Craft CMS
- Classifications
- CWE-639, CWE-915, T1036
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Mar 4, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Mar 4, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>= 4.0.0-RC1, < 4.17.0-beta.1
- Affected versionversion=>= 5.0.0-RC1, < 5.9.0-beta.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Official entry-authorship spoofing proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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