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Incorrect Privilege AssignmentWeakness · CWE-266

CVE-2025-14778

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-02-09
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
60/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable Zero-click

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
A flaw was found in Keycloak. A significant Broken Access Control vulnerability exists in the UserManagedPermissionService (UMA Protection API). When updating or deleting a UMA policy associated with multiple resources, the authorization check only verifies the caller's ownership against the first resource in the policy's list. This allows a user (Owner A) who owns one resource (RA) to update a shared policy and modify authorization rules for other resources (e.g., RB) in that same policy, even if those other resources are owned by a different user (Owner B). This constitutes a horizontal privilege escalation.

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 · moderate confidence

Keycloak's UserManagedPermissionService (UMA Protection API) performs insufficient authorization checks when updating or deleting shared policies containing multiple resources. The system only validates caller ownership against the first resource in the policy, allowing an owner of one resource (RA) in a shared policy to modify permissions for other resources (RB) they do not own, constituting horizontal privilege escalation.

MitigationImplement proper authorization validation that checks ownership of ALL resources in a policy before allowing updates or deletions, not just the first resource. Additionally, consider disallowing policies that mix resources with different owners.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

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

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 checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Identify Keycloak installation and version
    Check the Keycloak version by examining the server startup logs, the 'about' endpoint (/realms/{realm}/about), or the KEYCLOAK_VERSION environment variable if containerized. Compare the installed version against the fixed releases for this CVE.
    Affected if The installed Keycloak version is within the vulnerable range and has not been patched.
  2. Verify if UserManagedPermissionService (UMA Protection API) is enabled
    Confirm the UMAPermission API endpoints are accessible. Check Keycloak configuration (standalone.xml, startup scripts, or the 'keycloak' authentication flow settings) for the User Managed Permission protocol mapper and resource owner permissions. Look for the 'uma_protection' scope in client scopes or the 'resource' server capability policy.
    Affected if The UMA Protection API is enabled and clients can access /realms/{realm}/authz/protection/ endpoint.
  3. Identify shared policies with multiple resources
    Query the Keycloak Authorization Services API: GET /{realm}/authz/protection/resource-set to list all resources. For each resource, check if it is associated with a policy that contains other resources owned by different principals. Use the resource registration API to examine the 'owner' and 'policy' attributes.
    Affected if There exist policies in the system that contain multiple resources where the caller owns only some of those resources.
  4. Check authorization logic on policy update/delete operations
    Review the UserManagedPermissionService source code or runtime behavior when calling PUT or DELETE on /{realm}/authz/protection/resource-set or policy endpoints. Observe whether the server validates ownership for ALL resources in the policy or only the first resource encountered.
    Affected if The system allows a user to modify or delete a policy containing resources they do not own, provided those resources share a policy with a resource they do own.

A user is affected if running a vulnerable Keycloak version with the UMA Protection API enabled and has policies that group multiple resources from different owners together.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

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 data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Implement proper authorization validation that checks ownership of ALL resources in a policy before allowing updates or deletions, not just the first resource. Additionally, consider disallowing policies that mix resources with different owners.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation8.0 h
  • Testing8.0 h
  • Review / QA4.0 h
24.0 hours of engineering $4,160
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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-2025-14778 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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