WireGuard Portal is Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via User Self-Update to Admin Level in github.com/h44z/wg-portal
WireGuard Portal is Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via User Self-Update to Admin Level in github.com/h44z/wg-portal. NOTE: The source advisory for this report contains additional versions that could not be automatically mapped to standard Go module versions. (If this is causing false-positive reports from vulnerability scanners, please suggest an edit to the report.) The additional affected modules and versions are: github.com/h44z/wg-portal before v2.1.3.
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
29 explicit affected versions
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
WireGuard Portal (or wg-portal) is a web-based configuration portal for WireGuard server management. Prior to version 2.1.3, 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. 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. After the exploit, the attacker has full admin access to the WireGuard VPN management portal. The problem was fixed in v2.1.3. The docker images for the tag 'latest' built from the master branch also include the fix.
# 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](https://github.com/h44z/wg-portal/releases/tag/v2.1.3). The [docker images](https://hub.docker.com/r/wgportal/wg-portal) for the tag 'latest' built from the master branch also include the fix.
WireGuard Portal is Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via User Self-Update to Admin Level in github.com/h44z/wg-portal. NOTE: The source advisory for this report contains additional versions that could not be automatically mapped to standard Go module versions. (If this is causing false-positive reports from vulnerability scanners, please suggest an edit to the report.) The additional affected modules and versions are: github.com/h44z/wg-portal before v2.1.3.
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/27xxx/CVE-2026-27899.json
- https://github.com/h44z/wg-portal/security/advisories/GHSA-5rmx-256w-8mj9
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-27899
- https://github.com/h44z/wg-portal
- https://github.com/h44z/wg-portal/commit/fe4485037a25426446ced95050e9498f477bf71d
- https://github.com/h44z/wg-portal/releases/tag/v2.1.3
- https://hub.docker.com/layers/wgportal/wg-portal/v2.1.3/images/sha256-39acfab55598a74e561828b8cb639515ddc222d6c884996111f5ef235aba9e7b