CVE-2024-41942 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) CWE-274 vulnerability in jupyterhub. A fix is available for jupyterhub — see the affected versions and patch details below.
JupyterHub has a privilege escalation vulnerability with the `admin:users` scope
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-41942.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-41942 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
jupyterhub🐍jupyterhubReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
If a user is granted the admin:users scope, they may escalate their own privileges by making themselves a full admin user.
Details
The admin:users scope allows a user to edit user records:
admin:users
Read, write, create and delete users and their authentication state, not including their servers or tokens.
-- https://jupyterhub.readthedocs.io/en/stable/rbac/scopes.html#available-scopes
However, this includes making users admins. Admin users are granted scopes beyond admin:users making this a mechanism by which granted scopes may be escalated.
Impact
The impact is relatively small in that admin:users is already an extremely privileged scope only granted to trusted users.
In effect, admin:users is equivalent to admin=True, which is not intended.
Note that the change here only prevents escalation to the built-in JupyterHub admin role that has unrestricted permissions. It does not prevent users with e.g. groups permissions from granting themselves or other users permissions via group membership, which is intentional.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | jupyterhub | all versions | 4.1.6pip install --upgrade 'jupyterhub==4.1.6' |
| 🐍PyPI | jupyterhub | ≥ 5.0.0&&< 5.1.0 | 5.1.0pip install --upgrade 'jupyterhub==5.1.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for jupyterhub, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update jupyterhub to 4.1.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-41942 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-41942 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-41942. 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-2024-41942 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-41942 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.