Privilege Escalation in sulu/sulu (CVE-2021-43835)
Summary
Vulnerability in sulu/sulu (CVE-2021-43835). Successful exploitation can lead to full system takeover. Mitigation: upgrade to 2.2.18 or later.
Original description
The description as published by the source.
Sulu is an open-source PHP content management system based on the Symfony framework. In affected versions Sulu users who have access to any subset of the admin UI are able to elevate their privilege. Over the API it was possible for them to give themselves permissions to areas which they did not already had. This issue was introduced in 2.0.0-RC1 with the new ProfileController putAction. The versions have been patched in 2.2.18, 2.3.8 and 2.4.0. For users unable to upgrade the only known workaround is to apply a patch to the ProfileController manually.
Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD GitHub Advisory OSV
Auto-generated summary
Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.
A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-43835 has been found in sulu/sulu.
Successful exploitation can lead to full system takeover.
What to do: upgrade sulu/sulu to 2.2.18 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "sulu/sulu CVE-2021-43835" on the vendor's site.
CVE-2021-43835 (sulu/sulu) — CWE-269
Attack vector: remote (network-reachable) / no user interaction
Patched: 2.2.18 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.
A vulnerability (CWE-269) exists in sulu/sulu.
Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of sulu/sulu.
Severity: ?. Successful exploitation can lead to full system takeover.
Update to 2.2.18.
Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.
Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'sulu/sulu' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.
Response actions
Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order
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1Identify exposure identify
grep -r 'sulu/sulu' . | grep -v node_modulesリポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で
sulu/suluを grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。 -
2Apply patch patch
Upgrade sulu/sulu to 2.2.18ステージング環境で 2.2.18 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
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3Post-deployment verification verify
Confirm patched version is live in productionパッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。
Affected packages
References
- advisory github.com
- advisory nvd.nist.gov
- package github.com
- patch github.com