Vantage6Application

CVE-2023-28635

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-10-11
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 4.0.0 or later.
See remediation →
60/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Zero-click Patch available

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 · unedited
vantage6 is privacy preserving federated learning infrastructure. Prior to version 4.0.0, malicious users may try to get access to resources they are not allowed to see, by creating resources with integers as names. One example where this is a risk, is when users define which users are allowed to run algorithms on their node. This may be defined by username or user id. Now, for example, if user id 13 is allowed to run tasks, and an attacker creates a username with username '13', they would be wrongly allowed to run an algorithm. There may also be other places in the code where such a mixup of resource ID or name leads to issues. Version 4.0.0 contains a patch for this issue. The best solution is to check when resources are created or modified, that the resource name always starts with a character.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-863

An authorization check exists but is flawed, so it passes when it should fail. Attackers probe roles and object references to find the gap. Remediation means centralising and correctly implementing the access-control logic, then testing it against every role.

General guidance for the incorrect authorization class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

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
Vantage6Application
Affected:< 4.0.0

CVSS 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
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

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.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 4.0.0 or later
Fixed in 4.0.0
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

4.0.0

  1. Identify the current installed version of vantage6 in your environment
  2. Review the vantage6 4.0.0 release notes and migration guide for any required configuration changes
  3. Create a backup of your current configuration and data
  4. Upgrade vantage6 to version 4.0.0 using your package manager (e.g., pip install vantage6==4.0.0 or equivalent)
  5. Verify the installation was successful and the service starts correctly
  6. Test that the authorization checks work correctly (e.g., verify that usernames cannot be created that are purely numeric and collide with user IDs)
Caveat As this is a major version upgrade from 3.x to 4.0.0, review release notes for potential breaking changes in API, configuration, or dependencies

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $1,600. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-28635 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

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.

What belongs here
  • 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