CAPEC-58
Restful Privilege Elevation
An adversary identifies a Rest HTTP (Get, Put, Delete) style permission method allowing them to perform various malicious actions upon server data due to lack of access control mechanisms implemented within the application service accepting HTTP messages.
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Rest uses standard HTTP (Get, Put, Delete) style permissions methods, but these are not necessarily correlated generally with back end programs. Strict interpretation of HTTP get methods means that these HTTP Get services should not be used to delete information on the server, but there is no access control mechanism to back up this logic. This means that unless the services are properly ACL'd and the application's service implementation are following these guidelines then an HTTP request can easily execute a delete or update on the server side. The attacker identifies a HTTP Get URL such as http://victimsite/updateOrder, which calls out to a program to update orders on a database or other resource. The URL is not idempotent so the request can be submitted multiple times by the attacker, additionally, the attacker may be able to exploit the URL published as a Get method that actually performs updates (instead of merely retrieving data). This may result in malicious or inadvertent altering of data on the server.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-58: Restful Privilege Elevation: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/58.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/58?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
The attacker needs to be able to identify HTTP Get URLs. The Get methods must be set to call applications that perform operations other than get such as update and delete.
Skills required
- Low skill
It is relatively straightforward to identify an HTTP Get method that changes state on the server side and executes against an over-privileged system interface
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Modify Data | Integrity | |
| Gain Privileges | Confidentiality, Access Control, Authorization |
Mitigations
Design: Enforce principle of least privilege
Implementation: Ensure that HTTP Get methods only retrieve state and do not alter state on the server side
Implementation: Ensure that HTTP methods have proper ACLs based on what the functionality they expose
Weaknesses it exploits
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 8.6CVE-2026-112191
In Eclipse Kura versions 5.4.0 through 5.6.2, the Identity REST APIs (identity/v1, and identity/v2 since 5.5.0, provided by org.eclipse.kura.rest.identity.provider) do not check identity and permission management requests against the permi…
- 8.6CVE-2026-125382
Map-OS 5.0.0 to before 5.2.2 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in the REST users API that allows non-administrator operators holding the cUsuario permission to bypass permission-delegation and super-administrator protections. A…
- 8.6CVE-2026-125364
frab through 0.9.1 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability that allows authenticated crew users to grant themselves orga roles by submitting unchecked nested conference_users_attributes. Attackers can abuse UsersController#update or …
- 8.6CVE-2026-125360
Storyden through 1.26.16 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability that allows users holding MANAGE_ROLES to grant the ADMINISTRATOR permission without being administrators. Attackers can call AccountAddRole on another controlled accou…
- 7.3CVE-2026-84410
In apport before 2.37.0, an improper privilege management vulnerability allows an unprivileged local attacker to gain root privileges on systems where automatic crash reporting is enabled. The automatic crash report processing pipeline run…
- 8.8CVE-2026-12977
A flaw was found in the deployment-operation family of WildFly Core. Certain handlers, such as upload-deployment-url, lack proper sensitivity classification, allowing an administrator with the restricted "Maintainer" role to read sensitive…
- 8.8CVE-2026-123064
The WP BASE Booking of Appointments, Services and Events WordPress plugin before 6.5.1 does not properly restrict access to one of its user-creation actions, allowing authenticated users with Subscriber-level access and above to create a n…
- 7.2CVE-2026-121875
The Post Duplicator WordPress plugin before 3.0.18 does not validate the capabilities assigned to roles through its permissions settings, allowing a site administrator on a multisite network who is not a Super Admin to grant any role arbit…
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Related attack patterns
Examples
The HTTP Get method is designed to retrieve resources and not to alter the state of the application or resour…
The HTTP Get method is designed to retrieve resources and not to alter the state of the application or resources on the server side. However, developers can easily code programs that accept a HTTP Get request that do in fact create, update or delete data on the server. Both Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photosets.delete.html) and del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/api/posts/delete) have implemented delete operations using standard HTTP Get requests. These HTTP Get methods do delete data on the server side, despite being called from Get which is not supposed to alter state.
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