Privilege Escalation in GraphQL : Exploiting Finance Role Token to Access Admin Data : Part 1

About Me

Hi everyone! My name is Satyam Pawale, also known as @hackersatty in the bug bounty world. I started bug hunting in 2024 and have been passionate about finding security vulnerabilities ever since.

This blog is meant to share my experience and help others learn from it. If you like it or have any feedback, feel free to drop a comment below. Let’s get started!

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Privilege Escalation in GraphQL :

GraphQL is a powerful query language for APIs, offering flexibility to request specific data. However, this flexibility can sometimes lead to misconfigurations and vulnerabilities if proper security measures aren’t enforced. In this article, we explore a real-world example of privilege escalation in a GraphQL endpoint due to inadequate role-based access control (RBAC). We’ll discuss how such issues occur and outline strategies to identify and mitigate these risks.

The Vulnerability in Focus

During an application security assessment (e.g., example.com/graphql, example.com/graphql.json, or endpoints like /ggql), it was discovered that a user with a "finance" role token could manipulate GraphQL requests to access sensitive admin-level data. The server failed to validate the user's privileges, enabling…