Pelican Web UI Affected by a Privilege Escalation Attack

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS 4.0

9.0 · CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H · score source

EPSS

• CVE-2026-42571: 0.32% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 25.11 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Background On April 2nd, 2026, a Claude coding agent alerted Pelican PI Brian Bockelman to a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting Pelican's Web User Interface (WebUI) for various versions between v7.21 and v7.24. Upon further investigation, the Pelican team discovered this attack allows any user authenticated to the WebUI via OAuth to gain admin privileges under certain configurations. These may include servers with the following configuration variables enabled: - Server.UIAdminUsers: Affected if any of the listed admin users or the default admin account have not previously logged in to the server. - Server.AdminGroups: Affected if Issuer.GroupSource is set to internal and an admin of the group has not previously logged in to the server. The OSDF operations team has mitigated these for core services, origins, and caches operated by the PATh project. However, mitigation may be needed for caches and origins not centrally operated. Pelican Command Line has not currently…

Published by the source

4 May 2026, 21:24 UTC

Last modified by the source

19 Aug 2026, 19:46 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:28 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-rpfr-x88x-xwcw

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2026-42571

Advisory: Pelican Web UI Affected by a Privilege Escalation Attack
IDs: CVE-2026-42571, GHSA-rpfr-x88x-xwcw
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2026-42571 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:28 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: Critical (CVSS 9.0)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: github.com/pelicanplatform/pelican 0.0.0-20260408120501-7f73b9c3e677. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go github.com/pelicanplatform/pelican: affected < 0.0.0-20260408120501-7f73b9c3e677; fixed in 0.0.0-20260408120501-7f73b9c3e677

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go github.com/pelicanplatform/pelican: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on github.com/pelicanplatform/pelican.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-rpfr-x88x-xwcw (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-rpfr-x88x-xwcw lists affected ranges: Go github.com/pelicanplatform/pelican >=0 <0.0.0-20260408120501-7f73b9c3e677)

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