CVE-2026-59093
Weaviate before 1.38.0 does not verify that a principal performing an RBAC role assignment holds the permissions granted by the assigned role. The assignRoleToUser and assignRoleToGroup handlers (POST /authz/users/{id}/assign and /authz/groups/{id}/assign) authorize only that the caller may assign roles to the target user or group, not the permissions contained in the assigned roles, unlike role creation which enforces that a user can only create roles with permissions less than or equal to its own. A user holding only the delegated assign_and_revoke_users or assign_and_revoke_groups permission can assign the built-in admin role, or any high-privilege custom role, to itself or others, escalating to full administrative control of the database.
No public exploitation has been reported so far. No distribution fix is listed yet; apply vendor mitigations and monitor.
Recommended action: Track your distribution's security tracker and apply the fix as soon as it ships.
Severity metrics
CVSS 4.0 : 8.7 HIGH · CVSS 3.1 : 8.8 HIGH
Vector: AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Affected & fixed versions by distribution
Versions are the native distribution strings (backport-aware): RHEL/Debian/SUSE backport fixes, so compare with the distro version comparator (dpkg / rpm / vercmp), not the upstream version.
No affected package in the tracked watchlist yet (Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, SUSE, Red Hat...). Triage may still be pending.