CVE-2025-26467
Description
A Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions vulnerability exists in Apache Cassandra. In affected versions, a user with MODIFY permission on all keyspaces can exploit unsafe operations against certain system resources to escalate privileges and gain superuser access within the Cassandra cluster. This escalation is possible because granting MODIFY at the global keyspace level inadvertently extends to sensitive resources, allowing abuse beyond the intended scope of data modification privileges.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated Moderate because exploitation requires an attacker to already have MODIFY permission on all keyspaces. While it allows privilege escalation to superuser within the cluster, it cannot be exploited by unauthenticated users or those with lower privileges. Proper access controls and role management reduce the risk, limiting the impact to clusters where broad MODIFY permissions have been granted.
Mitigation
No mitigation is currently available that meets Red Hat Product Security’s standards for usability, deployment, applicability, or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.5 | N/A | 8.8 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | High | N/A | Low |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | Low | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | None | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Access Control
Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
A user can access restricted functionality and/or sensitive information that may include administrative functionality and user accounts.
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