published August 31, 2026
Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in ash-project ash_admin turns a record-lookup URL into an equality oracle over sensitive attributes.
AshAdmin.Helpers.decode_primary_key/2 decodes the composite-primary-key form (Base64 plus ETF) and returns the decoded map verbatim as the lookup filter, without checking that its keys are the resource's primary-key fields. The deserialization guards bound size, block new atoms and funs, and reject nested expressions, but none restricts which fields come back, and :safe still allows any already-interned attribute name. An attacker can therefore encode %{api_token: "guess"} and have it spliced into the lookup filter, brute-forcing a sensitive attribute value (API token, reset token) one equality guess at a time; Map.to_list/1 also accepts structs, yielding a bogus __struct__ key. The fix rejects any decoded key that is not a real primary-key field.
This issue affects ash_admin: from 0.1.0 before 1.3.1.