Executive brief
Snipe-IT is an open-source asset management system that tracks hardware, software, and IT inventory across organizations. A flaw in the user management API allows administrators to permanently strip administrative and granular permissions from other user accounts by sending an incomplete update request. Attackers with admin access can disable other admins with no warning, and users with the edit-users permission can wipe permissions from regular accounts, causing loss of access and functionality without audit trail or notification.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an improper privilege management flaw (CWE-269) in the UsersController's update() method. When a PUT /users/{id} request is processed, the permission request field is passed unconditionally to NormalizePermissionsPayloadAction, which returns an empty array if the field is absent. PreserveUnauthorizedPrivilegedPermissionsAction then selectively restores only the superuser and admin keys based on the editor's privilege level, discarding all other permissions. This causes $user->permissions to be overwritten with a sparse result. The canEditAuthFields authorization gate permits admins to edit other non-superuser accounts (including other admins). An attacker with admin credentials can send a PUT /users/{id} request targeting another admin without the permission field, permanently destroying the target's admin flag and all permissions with no error, warning, or notification. A secondary path allows non-admin users holding the users.edit permission to wipe permissions from regular (non-admin, non-superuser) accounts. The vulnerability is patched in version 8.6.0 and later.
Affected products
- Snipe-IT Snipe-IT < 8.6.0
Timeline
- 2026-08-28: disclosed: GitHub Advisory Database publication
- 2026-08-28: patched: Fix available in version 8.6.0; commit 1cff2d67aabd00ee51d864c1d7fb717494c1d6ad