Skip to content

Navidrome Transcoding Permission Bypass Vulnerability Report

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 29, 2025 in navidrome/navidrome • Updated May 30, 2025

Package

gomod github.com/navidrome/navidrome (Go)

Affected versions

<= 0.55.2

Patched versions

0.56.0

Description

Summary

A permission verification flaw in Navidrome allows any authenticated regular user to bypass authorization checks and perform administrator-only transcoding configuration operations, including creating, modifying, and deleting transcoding settings.

Details

Navidrome supports transcoding functionality which, although disabled by default, should restrict configuration operations to administrators only. However, the application fails to properly validate whether a user has administrative privileges when handling transcoding configuration requests.

The vulnerability exists in the API endpoints that manage transcoding settings. When a regular user sends requests to these endpoints, the application processes them without verifying if the user has administrative privileges, despite the JWT token clearly indicating the user is not an administrator ("adm":false).

The affected endpoints include:

  • POST /api/transcoding (Create transcoding configuration)
  • PUT /api/transcoding/:id (Update transcoding configuration)
  • DELETE /api/transcoding/:id (Delete transcoding configuration)
  • GET /api/transcoding (List transcoding configurations)

PoC

  1. Set up Navidrome with transcoding enabled
  2. Log in as a regular user (non-administrator)
  3. Send the following HTTP request:
POST /api/transcoding HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.199.134:4533
Content-Length: 81
x-nd-client-unique-id: e559d130-4295-401e-b65f-be7fdd564e
accept: application/json
x-nd-authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJhZG0iOmZhbHNlLCJleHAiOjE3NDY2MzIyNDEsImlhdCI6MTc0NjQ1ODk5NiwiaXNzIjoiTkQiLCJzdWIiOiJ1c2VyMSIsInVpZCI6InV3THJGcWxXNHhnNEt4QjNxMk85eTYifQ.jqv2eESY8QTAHY-oLbBmO0v8IyDXrofvXqQgXSrJ6SM
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.5359.125 Safari/537.36
content-type: application/json
Origin: http://192.168.199.134:4533
Referer: http://192.168.199.134:4533/app/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: zh-CN,zh;q=0.9

{"defaultBitRate":192,"name":"trans6","command":"tran6","targetFormat":"tran6"}
  1. The request will succeed despite the JWT token clearly indicating the user is not an administrator ("adm":false)
  2. The same operation can be performed with administrator credentials, confirming that no authorization check is being performed

Impact

This vulnerability allows regular users to modify critical system configurations that should be restricted to administrators only. While Navidrome does not recommend enabling transcoding in production environments, when it is enabled, proper authorization checks should still be enforced.

The security impact includes:

  1. Privilege Escalation: Regular users can perform administrator-only actions
  2. System Configuration Tampering: Unauthorized users can modify transcoding settings, potentially affecting system performance or functionality
  3. Potential Command Injection: Since transcoding settings include command parameters, this could potentially lead to command injection if not properly sanitized

In the threat model where administrators are trusted but regular users are not, this vulnerability represents a significant security risk when transcoding is enabled.

References

@deluan deluan published to navidrome/navidrome May 29, 2025
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 29, 2025
Reviewed May 29, 2025
Published by the National Vulnerability Database May 30, 2025
Last updated May 30, 2025

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v4 base metrics

Exploitability Metrics
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Attack Requirements None
Privileges Required Low
User interaction None
Vulnerable System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality High
Integrity High
Availability High
Subsequent System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality None
Integrity None
Availability None

CVSS v4 base metrics

Exploitability Metrics
Attack Vector: This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible. This metric value (and consequently the resulting severity) will be larger the more remote (logically, and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerable system. The assumption is that the number of potential attackers for a vulnerability that could be exploited from across a network is larger than the number of potential attackers that could exploit a vulnerability requiring physical access to a device, and therefore warrants a greater severity.
Attack Complexity: This metric captures measurable actions that must be taken by the attacker to actively evade or circumvent existing built-in security-enhancing conditions in order to obtain a working exploit. These are conditions whose primary purpose is to increase security and/or increase exploit engineering complexity. A vulnerability exploitable without a target-specific variable has a lower complexity than a vulnerability that would require non-trivial customization. This metric is meant to capture security mechanisms utilized by the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: This metric captures the prerequisite deployment and execution conditions or variables of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These differ from security-enhancing techniques/technologies (ref Attack Complexity) as the primary purpose of these conditions is not to explicitly mitigate attacks, but rather, emerge naturally as a consequence of the deployment and execution of the vulnerable system.
Privileges Required: This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess prior to successfully exploiting the vulnerability. The method by which the attacker obtains privileged credentials prior to the attack (e.g., free trial accounts), is outside the scope of this metric. Generally, self-service provisioned accounts do not constitute a privilege requirement if the attacker can grant themselves privileges as part of the attack.
User interaction: This metric captures the requirement for a human user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable system. This metric determines whether the vulnerability can be exploited solely at the will of the attacker, or whether a separate user (or user-initiated process) must participate in some manner.
Vulnerable System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the VULNERABLE SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.
Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).
Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.
Subsequent System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.
Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).
Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P

EPSS score

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2025-48948

GHSA ID

GHSA-f238-rggp-82m3

Source code

Credits

Loading Checking history
See something to contribute? Suggest improvements for this vulnerability.