GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9
HIGHWireGuard Portal is Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via User Self-Update to Admin Level
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.
Blast Radius
github.com/h44z/wg-portalReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Privilege Escalation to Admin via User Self-Update in wg-portal
Summary
Any authenticated non-admin user can become a full administrator by sending a single PUT request to their own user profile endpoint with "IsAdmin": true in the JSON body. After logging out and back in, the session picks up admin privileges from the database.
Tested against wg-portal v2.1.2 (Docker image wgportal/wg-portal:v2).
Root Cause
When a user updates their own profile, the server parses the full JSON body into the user model, including the IsAdmin boolean field. A function responsible for preserving calculated or protected attributes pins certain fields to their database values (such as base model data, linked peer count, and authentication data), but it does not do this for IsAdmin. As a result, whatever value the client sends for IsAdmin is written directly to the database.
Impact
After the exploit, the attacker has full admin access to the WireGuard VPN management portal. They can:
- Read and modify every user account
- Create, modify, and delete WireGuard peers on any interface
- View WireGuard interface configurations
- Disable or lock other user accounts
- Access the full user list and their API tokens
Patches
The problem was fixed in the latest release, v2.1.3. The docker images for the tag 'latest' built from the master branch also include the fix.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/h44z/wg-portal | all versions | 2.1.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/h44z/wg-portal. 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 github.com/h44z/wg-portal to 2.1.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9 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 GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9 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 GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.