# CVE-2022-31007: Privilege escalation from administrator in eLabFTW

> An authenticated team administrator can escalate privileges to system administrator, allowing full control over the eLabFTW application.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.9 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 31 May 2022
- **Updated:** 23 Apr 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-937c-m7p3-775v

## What is CVE-2022-31007?

CVE-2022-31007 is a medium-severity vulnerability in elabftw, published on 31 May 2022. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

eLabFTW is an electronic lab notebook manager for research teams. Prior to version 4.3.0, a vulnerability allows an authenticated user with an administrator role in a team to assign itself system administrator privileges within the application, or create a new system administrator account. The issue has been corrected in eLabFTW version 4.3.0. In the context of eLabFTW, an administrator is a user account with certain privileges to manage users and content in their assigned team/teams. A system administrator account can manage all accounts, teams and edit system-wide settings within the application. The impact is not deemed as high, as it requires the attacker to have access to an administrator account. Regular user accounts cannot exploit this to gain admin rights. A workaround for one if the issues is removing the ability of administrators to create accounts.

Weakness: CWE-842 (Placement of User into Incorrect Group), CWE-1287 (Improper Validation of Specified Type of Input)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-31007?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Elabftw Elabftw.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-31007?

No fix has been published for CVE-2022-31007 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2022-31007 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-31007 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code:

- elabFTW < 4.1.0 - account lockout bypass and login brute force (github_poc): https://github.com/gregscharf/CVE-2022-31007-Python-POC

## Other vulnerabilities in elabftw

- [CVE-2021-43834](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-43834/): Incorrect Authentication in elabftw (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2024-28100](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-28100/): Stored Cross-site Scripting leading to arbitrary actions taken on behalf of users in elabftw (high 8.9)
- [CVE-2019-12185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-12185/): File upload in n/a (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2024-25632](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-25632/): Unauthorised granting of administrator privileges over arbitrary teams under certain circumstances (high 8.6)
- [CVE-2025-25206](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-25206/): Incorrect input validation could allow an authenticated user to read sensitive information (high 8.3)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2022-31007 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-31007 is a medium-severity vulnerability in elabftw, published on 31 May 2022. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-31007 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: elabftw. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-31007/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-31007/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-31007
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-31007
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-31007

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-31007/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.