Joomla\!Application · Joomla
CVE-2018-17855
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedAn issue was discovered in Joomla! before 3.8.13. If an attacker gets access to the mail account of an user who can approve admin verifications in the registration process, he can activate himself.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceAuthentication bypass in Joomla's admin verification workflow for user registration. If an attacker compromises the email account of a user with privileges to approve admin verifications, they can exploit the password reset or approval mechanism to activate their own account as an administrator, achieving privilege escalation.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Joomla\!Application
>= 1.5.0, < 3.8.13CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check installed Joomla versionNavigate to Help > System Information > Joomla! Version in the admin panel, or check the /libraries/cms/version.php file for the VERSION constantAffected if version is >= 1.5.0 and < 3.8.13
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Verify if user registration is enabledGo to Users > Manage > Options in the admin panel, or inspect configuration.xml for the allowUserRegistration parameterAffected if user registration is set to Yes or allowUserRegistration is 1
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Confirm admin verification is required for new usersGo to Users > Manage > Options and check if New User Account Activation is set to Admin, or inspect configuration.xml for the newUserActivation parameterAffected if activation is set to Admin approval (value 2)
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Identify users with admin approval privilegesGo to Users > Groups and check for users assigned to groups with Users > Action: Admin Login or Super Users permissions. Also check Users > Manage for any users with admin-level accessAffected if any user accounts exist with privileges to approve admin verifications
You are affected if your Joomla version is below 3.8.13 AND user registration with admin approval is enabled, allowing an attacker who compromises a privileged user's email to escalate privileges.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor data3.8.13
Upgrade to Joomla 3.8.13 or later. Additionally, enforce multi-factor authentication on email accounts with admin approval privileges and audit which users have these privileges.
Fix this in Joomla\!
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation6.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $3,984.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-17855 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2018-17855 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data