Student-to-Administrator escalation via writable role field
Published Apr 14, 2026 · Updated Apr 14, 2026
Privilege escalation in Chamilo LMS before 2.0.0-RC.3 allows remote authenticated users to gain platform administration through the user API. The PUT /api/users/{id} operation checks only record ownership while allowing the writable roles field to accept arbitrary values, including ROLE_ADMIN. A registered student account is sufficient to obtain full administrative control over all courses, user data, grades, and platform settings.
Summary
What happened
Privilege escalation in Chamilo LMS before 2.0.0-RC.3 allows remote authenticated users to gain platform administration through the user API. The PUT /api/users/{id} operation checks only record ownership while allowing the writable roles field to accept arbitrary values, including ROLE_ADMIN. A registered student account is sufficient to obtain full administrative control over all courses, user data, grades, and platform settings.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-40291
- Published
- Apr 14, 2026
- Updated
- Apr 14, 2026
- Vendor
- Chamilo
- Product
- Chamilo LMS
- Classifications
- CWE-269, CWE-863, T1068
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Apr 14, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 14, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=< 2.0-RC.3
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
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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
Check the software in your environment
Book a demo to see how Hinoki identifies affected software and validates exploitability in your environment.
Book a demo