CVE-2024-32003
HIGHCVE-2024-32003 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in winter/wn-dusk-plugin. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2024-32003 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Dusk plugin may allow unfettered user authentication in misconfigured installs
Blast Radius
winter/wn-dusk-pluginReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
wn-dusk-plugin (Dusk plugin) is a plugin which integrates Laravel Dusk browser testing into Winter CMS. The Dusk plugin provides some special routes as part of its testing framework to allow a browser environment (such as headless Chrome) to act as a user in the Backend or User plugin without having to go through authentication. This route is [[URL]]/_dusk/login/[[USER ID]]/[[MANAGER]] - where [[URL]] is the base URL of the site, [[USER ID]] is the ID of the user account and [[MANAGER]] is the authentication manager (either backend for Backend, or user for the User plugin). If a configuration of a site using the Dusk plugin is set up in such a way that the Dusk plugin is available publicly and the test cases in Dusk are run with live data, this route may potentially be used to gain access to any user account in either the Backend or User plugin without authentication. As indicated in the README, this plugin should only be used in development and should NOT be used in a production instance. It is specifically recommended that the plugin be installed as a development dependency only in Composer. In order to remediate this issue, the special routes used above will now no longer be registered unless the APP_ENV environment variable is specifically set to dusk. Since Winter by default does not use this environment variable and it is not populated by default, it will only exist if Dusk's automatic configuration is used (which won't exhibit this vulnerability) or if a developer manually specifies it in their configuration. The automatic configuration performed by the Dusk plugin has also been hardened by default to use sane defaults and not allow external environment variables to leak into this configuration. This will only affect users in which the Winter CMS installation meets ALL the following criteria: 1. The Dusk plugin is installed in the Winter CMS instance. 2. The application is in production mode (ie. the debug config value is set to true in config/app.php). 3. The Dusk plugin's automatic configuration has been overridden, either by providing a custom .env.dusk file or by providing custom configuration in the config/dusk folder, or by providing configuration environment variables externally. 4. The environment has been configured to use production data in the database for testing, and not the temporary SQLite database that Dusk uses by default. 5. The application is connectable via the web. This issue has been fixed in version 2.1.0. Users are advised to upgrade.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | winter/wn-dusk-plugin | all versions | 2.1.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for winter/wn-dusk-plugin. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update winter/wn-dusk-plugin to 2.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-32003 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2024-32003 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2024-32003. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-32003 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2024-32003 across Packagist dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.