CVE-2017-12635
Exploitation confirmed. First attested on 2023-10-14 by GCVE · kevintel, GCVE · shadowserver.
- Published2017-11-14
- Fixed in1.7.0
- WeaknessCWE-269
Am I affected?
Debian, Ubuntu or Red Hat sometimes backport a fix without changing the upstream version number: such a version reads « to verify », never « affected ».With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.
Description
Due to differences in the Erlang-based JSON parser and JavaScript-based JSON parser, it is possible in Apache CouchDB before 1.7.0 and 2.x before 2.1.1 to submit _users documents with duplicate keys for 'roles' used for access control within the database, including the special case '_admin' role, that denotes administrative users. In combination with CVE-2017-12636 (Remote Code Execution), this can be used to give non-admin users access to arbitrary shell commands on the server as the database system user. The JSON parser differences result in behaviour that if two 'roles' keys are available in the JSON, the second one will be used for authorising the document write, but the first 'roles' key is used for subsequent authorization for the newly created user. By design, users can not assign themselves roles. The vulnerability allows non-admin users to give themselves admin privileges.
Timeline
dates in UTC- 2017-11-1420:29CVE publishedNVD
- 2023-10-1414:18Listed as exploited by GCVEGCVE
- 2023-10-1414:18Exploitation first reportedGCVE
- 2026-10-2319:23First public proof of conceptPoC-in-GitHub
- 2026-10-2319:23EPSS crossed 10 %FIRST EPSS
Observed activity
isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-23 21:37 UTCBlock these indicators
- Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2017-12635?format=txt
- CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2017-12635?format=csv
- TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
- The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.
Versions per branch
NVD| Branch | Affected | Fixed in | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.7 | < 1.7.0 | 1.7.0 | NVD |
| 2.0 | = 2.0.0 | no fix published | NVD |
as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.
Fix
- Update Apache couchdb to 1.7.0
Detection
read 2026-10-23 19:23 UTC- Nuclei template
- none so far ProjectDiscovery
- Exploit-DB
- no entry Exploit-DB
- Proof-of-concept repositories
- 5 repositories, unverifiedassalielmehdi/CVE-2017-12635cyberharsh/Apache-couchdb-CVE-2017-12635Dungsocool/CVE-2017-12635_36Darabium/couchdb-exploitCyberCTF/vulhub-couchdb-cve-2017-12635 PoC-in-GitHub
Sources
- GCVEexploitation2023-10-14
- NVDCVSS 3.09.8read 2026-10-23
- NVDCVSS 2.010read 2026-10-23
- NVDweakness (CWE)CWE-269read 2026-10-23
- FIRST EPSSEPSS score99.8 %read 2026-10-23
- PoC-in-GitHubproof of concept5read 2026-10-23
Technical details
- CVSS v3 Vector
- CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Published
- 2017-11-14
- Last Modified
- 2026-06-17
- NVD status
- Modified
Frequently asked questions
What is CVE-2017-12635?
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What is the CVSS score for CVE-2017-12635?
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