CVE-2026-85990: Leantime: Privilege escalation to administrator via unprotected JSON-RPC methods

Summary

Leantime, an open source project management system, lacks per-method authorization on several JSON-RPC API methods. Any authenticated user, including a read-only user, can create an interactive administrator account with an attacker-chosen role and can install, enable, disable and remove plugins. A public proof of concept is reported, and the CVE is rated CVSS 8.8 by NVD.

Affected

Leantime versions before 3.10.0 (GitHub advisory lists <= 3.9.5)

Fixed in

Upgrade to Leantime 3.10.0 or later; the newest 3.10.x release should be used after checking its upgrade notes.

Workaround

Unknown. No vendor workaround has been identified.

Exploitation

A public proof of concept is reported, but its availability is not fully verified.
No evidence of exploitation in the wild was found; the CISA KEV catalog was not checked directly.

Our recommendation

Upgrade Leantime to 3.10.0 or later as a priority.
Until patched, limit account creation, remove unused accounts and review the list of administrator accounts for unexpected entries.
Check the installed plugins for unfamiliar or recently changed entries.
Review the instance exposure, especially if self-registration, guest or shared accounts are enabled.

Public exploits

PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit and Exploit-DB list nothing for this CVE.

Research sources

GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-54mm-6729-r5wp github.com
Leantime release v3.10.0 github.com
Fix commit 5605e5ee github.com
Fix commit 7ebf7a95 github.com
OSV entry CVE-2026-85990 osv.dev
VulDB entry 417787 vuldb.com

Researched and written up in English and German by an AI (Claude by Anthropic) based on NVD, CISA, EPSS and the sources listed. The vendor information is authoritative. Researched on 31 Oct 2026, 20:05.

Original description (NVD)

Leantime is an open source project management system. Prior to 3.10.0, for the provisionally grouped account-creation and plugin-management surfaces, Leantime's JSON-RPC dispatcher in app/Domain/Api/Controllers/Jsonrpc.php exposes public API service methods, while PermissionEnforcer::enforce allows methods that lack a RequiresPermission attribute. A low-privilege authenticated user with an ordinary browser session can send the required X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest header and call leantime.rpc.api.api.createApiKeyWithProjects, which reaches Api::createApiKeyWithProjects, with an attacker-chosen role to create an interactive administrator account. The same missing per-method authorization exposes Plugins::installPlugin, Plugins::enablePlugin, Plugins::disablePlugin, and Plugins::removePlugin to ordinary authenticated users, permitting unauthorized plugin management. The complete provisionally grouped issue is fixed in version 3.10.0.

NVD references (10)

Sources

The tracker combines official, freely usable data sources – updated continuously:

NVD (NIST) – CVEs, rating (CVSS), affected products
CISA KEV – vulnerabilities confirmed by CISA as actively exploited
CISA Vulnrichment – CISA assessment (SSVC) in the official CVE record
FIRST EPSS – probability of exploitation
Microsoft MSRC – Patch Tuesday: vulnerabilities, severity, updates
PoC-in-GitHub – public proof-of-concept repositories
Metasploit (Rapid7) – modules of the Metasploit Framework
Exploit-DB (OffSec) – archive of public exploits (links only)
Patch days: official vendor pages (linked per vendor) (Vendor patch days)

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