CVE-2026-82685: Confirmation token accepted on any record in AshAuthentication

Severity: high (CVSS 7.6 v4.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-17 · updated 2026-09-18
Weakness: CWE-639

Description

Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an authenticated attacker to overwrite and confirm another user's email address, and so take over that account. A confirmation token issued to one user is accepted on any other user's record. AshAuthentication.AddOn.Confirmation.ConfirmChange verifies the token's signature and its act claim, then applies the changes stored against that token to whichever record the changeset targets, never comparing the sub claim against changeset.data. An attacker who registers an account and changes their own email replays the resulting token against a victim's record id, writing in their own address with force_change_attributes/2 and stamping confirmed_at, after which an ordinary password reset yields the account. The library's own confirmation flow is unaffected, because AshAuthentication.AddOn.Confirmation.Actions.confirm/3 resolves sub to a user and targets that record. This issue affects ash_authentication: from 0.5.0 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

Affected products

team-alembic ash_authentication: from 0.5.0 before 4.15.0; from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14 — fixed in 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: team-alembic ash_authentication 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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