Description
Malcolm's nginx Lua role-based access control (RBAC) layer decides whether an authenticated user may reach a role-restricted path (e.g. /htadmin, /auth, /admin_login, /arkime/api/esadmin, NetBox, upload endpoints) by pattern-matching the raw, percent-encoded request URI. Nginx itself, however, selects which location block actually serves the request using the percent-decoded, normalized URI. Because the RBAC check never percent-decodes its input, an authenticated low-privilege user can request an admin-only path using percent-encoding (e.g. /%68tadmin.php) and have nginx route it to the restricted location while the Lua RBAC gate evaluating the un-decoded raw string finds no matching restriction and grants access.
References3
Metrics
- CVSS 3.1
-
5.4
MEDIUM
Score source: CNA
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N - CVSS 4.0
-
5.3
MEDIUM
Score source: CNA
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X - EPSS — exploit probability
- 0% percentile: 15 · as of 11 November 2026
- CWE
- CWE-863
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