CVE-2026-35595: Vikunja Affected by Privilege Escalation via Project Reparenting

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-35595 is a high (CVSS 8.3) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in go-vikunja vikunja. EPSS estimates a 0.46% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 39.1% of scored vulnerabilities. 1 public exploit is recorded.

Timeline

1. 10-04-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 10-04-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Vikunja is an open-source self-hosted task management platform. Prior to 2.3.0, the CanUpdate check at pkg/models/project_permissions.go:139-148 only requires CanWrite on the new parent project when changing parent_project_id. However, Vikunja's permission model uses a recursive CTE that walks up the project hierarchy to compute permissions. Moving a project under a different parent changes the permission inheritance chain. When a user has inherited Write access (from a parent project share) and reparents the child project under their own project tree, the CTE resolves their ownership of the new parent as Admin (permission level 2) on the moved project. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.3.0.

• CWE-269Improper Privilege ManagementThe product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.