Ghost: Editors Could Promote Staff Users to Their Own RoleGHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc
MEDIUMFix: TryGhost/Ghost#30764GHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.3) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in ghost. A fix is available for ghost — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
ghostReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects npm packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Staff users with the Editor or Super Editor role were able to assign their own role to Author and Contributor users, despite not having permission to assign that role.
Vulnerable versions
This vulnerability is present in Ghost from v0.5.0 up to v6.64.0.
Patches
v6.64.0 contains a fix for this issue.
How to update
For self-hosters using Docker, find Docker's official Ghost image here. Updating a Docker-based Ghost instance is documented here.
If your Ghost is a Ghost-CLI install see our documentation on updating it to the latest version here.
References
Ghost thanks SecBuddyF of Tencent KeenLab, Santosh Kumar Puppala, Pedro Pinho, and Nhat Anh Vu for disclosing this vulnerability responsibly.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at [email protected].
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | ghost | ≥ 0.5.0&&< 6.64.0 | 6.64.0npm install ghost@6.64.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ghost, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ghost to 6.64.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-4pvx-fwjj-8gpc in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.