Description

SkyPilot fails to validate that authenticated users are entitled to grant administrator roles when updating service account permissions. Attackers can create a service account, escalate it to administrator role, and authenticate with its bearer token to gain administrative control over all users and workspaces.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-17T21:16:50.647Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-17T21:16:50.647Z",
  "executiveSummary": "SkyPilot suffers from an authorization bypass vulnerability involving the inadequate validation of permissions when authenticated users update service account roles.\nSpecifically, the application fails to enforce checks verifying whether an authenticated user is actually authorized to grant administrator privileges to service accounts.\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability is complete privilege escalation, allowing malicious actors to gain full administrative control over all system users and workspaces.\nThe affected product is SkyPilot. The risk implications are severe, as successful exploitation compromises the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the entire multi-tenant environment.\nAttacker capabilities require initial authentication to the platform, after which an attacker can create an arbitrary service account and explicitly escalate its privileges to the administrator role.\nFollowing this escalation, the attacker can authenticate using the newly acquired service account bearer token, inheriting unrestricted administrative capabilities across the infrastructure.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability lies in a lack of server-side authorization checks and inadequate role-assignment validation logic within the service account permission update routines of SkyPilot.\nWhen processing updates to service account permissions, the application logic accepts role modification requests without confirming whether the requesting authenticated principal possesses the administrative entitlements required to assign the administrator role.\nThe vulnerable component handles the management and assignment of service account roles and permissions. The vulnerability can be exploited by any authenticated user who has standard, unprivileged access to the platform.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the low-privileged authenticated attacker leverages their legitimate access to create a new, controlled service account within SkyPilot.\nSecond, the attacker sends a crafted update request targeting the permissions of the newly created service account, assigning it the administrator role.\nDue to the absence of proper authorization validation on the backend, the request is processed successfully without verifying the attacker's administrative standing.\nThird, the attacker generates or retrieves the bearer token associated with the newly elevated service account.\nFinally, the attacker authenticates to the API or platform endpoints using this bearer token, bypassing all standard authorization controls and achieving full administrative control over all users and workspaces managed by the SkyPilot instance.\nThe post-exploitation impact allows the adversary to perform arbitrary administrative operations, manipulate workloads, access sensitive workspace data, and compromise other user accounts within the environment."
}