CVE-2026-41424 Wazuh: Privilege Escalation via Admin-Protection Bypass in update-user API Endpoint
Authenticated users with users_admin role can bypass admin protection to overwrite superuser passwords and gain full administrative control.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-41424?
CVE-2026-41424 is a high-severity vulnerability in Wazuh Wazuh, published on 19 Aug 2026. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Wazuh is a free and open source platform used for threat prevention, detection, and response. From 4.9.0 until 4.10.4 and 4.14.6, PUT /security/users/{user_id} in api/api/controllers/security_controller.py passes request.get("user") instead of request.context['token_info']['sub'] as current_user. remove_nones_to_dict() removes the resulting None value, so the reserved-account protection in framework/wazuh/security.py cannot verify who is making the request. An authenticated user with the users_admin role can overwrite the password of protected administrator accounts with user IDs at or below 99, including the wazuh superuser, and gain full administrative control. This issue is fixed in versions 4.10.4 and 4.14.6.
Weakness: CWE-863
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-41424?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Wazuh Wazuh.
How do I fix CVE-2026-41424?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-41424 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2026-41424 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-41424 exists.
Other vulnerabilities in Wazuh Wazuh
- CVE-2025-24016 Wazuh Server Deserialization of Untrusted Data
- CVE-2024-32038 Wazuh Analysis Engine Event Decoder Heap-based Buffer Overflow Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
- CVE-2021-44079 Command injection in n/a
- CVE-2024-1243 Remote code execution and local privilege escalation in Wazuh Windows agent via NetNTLMv2 hash theft
- CVE-2026-61800 Wazuh cluster worker file sync allows arbitrary file write under /var/ossec (incomplete fix for CVE-2026-30893)
Sources
Also known as GHSA-gj9h-8hmr-xjjr.