CVE-2023-33972: Privilege escalation from having CREATE access on a keyspace in Scylladb

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-09-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-269

Description

Scylladb is a NoSQL data store using the seastar framework, compatible with Apache Cassandra. Authenticated users who are authorized to create tables in a keyspace can escalate their privileges to access a table in the same keyspace, even if they don't have permissions for that table. This issue has not yet been patched. A workaround to address this issue is to disable CREATE privileges on a keyspace, and create new tables on behalf of other users.

Affected products

scylladb: through 5.2.8

References

https://github.com/scylladb/scylladb/security/advisories/GHSA-ww5v-p45p-3vhq
https://github.com/scylladb/scylladb/security/advisories/GHSA-ww5v-p45p-3vhq

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