CVE-2025-9804: WSO2 API Control Plane Auth Bypass Vulnerability

CVE-2025-9804 Overview

CVE-2025-9804 is an improper access control vulnerability [CWE-284] affecting multiple WSO2 products. The flaw stems from insufficient permission enforcement in certain internal SOAP Admin Services and System REST APIs. A low-privileged authenticated user can invoke these interfaces to perform unauthorized operations, including reading server-level information.

The issue affects only internal administrative interfaces. APIs exposed through the WSO2 API Manager's API Gateway remain unaffected. The vulnerability spans a broad set of WSO2 products including API Manager, Identity Server, Enterprise Integrator, and multiple Open Banking components.

Critical Impact
An authenticated low-privileged user can access confidential server-level information through internal WSO2 administrative APIs across 15 distinct WSO2 product lines.

Affected Products

WSO2 API Manager (2.0.0 through 4.5.0) and API Manager Analytics
WSO2 Identity Server (5.2.0 through 7.1.0), Identity Server Analytics, and Identity Server as Key Manager
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, Enterprise Service Bus, Enterprise Mobility Manager, Data Analytics Server, Traffic Manager, Universal Gateway, API Control Plane, and Open Banking AM/IAM/KM

Discovery Timeline

2025-10-16 - CVE-2025-9804 published to NVD
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-9804

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability results from missing or insufficient authorization checks on internal management interfaces exposed by the WSO2 Carbon platform. WSO2 products share a common Carbon-based administrative layer that publishes SOAP Admin Services and System REST APIs for internal orchestration.

These endpoints assume that access is restricted to administrative roles. However, permission enforcement on certain operations does not correctly validate the caller's role or scope. An authenticated user with minimal privileges can therefore issue requests that should be reserved for administrators.

The scope of exposed operations includes reading server configuration and platform metadata. Impact is limited to confidentiality per the CVSS vector; integrity and availability are not affected. The attack requires network access to the management interface and valid low-privilege credentials.

Root Cause

The root cause is broken access control [CWE-284] within specific handlers of internal SOAP Admin Services and System REST APIs. The affected code paths rely on authentication as a sufficient trust boundary and omit granular authorization checks tied to administrative roles or scopes.

Attack Vector

An attacker must first obtain valid credentials for any account on the target WSO2 deployment. From there, the attacker sends crafted HTTP or SOAP requests directly to internal admin service endpoints (for example, paths under /services/ or internal system REST routes). Because APIs published through the API Manager Gateway are not affected, exploitation requires reachability to the management plane rather than the public gateway.

See the WSO2 Security Advisory WSO2-2025-4503 for authoritative details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-9804

Indicators of Compromise

Requests from non-administrative user sessions to internal SOAP endpoints under /services/ on WSO2 Carbon management ports (default 9443).
Access to System REST API paths by users whose assigned roles do not include admin or equivalent administrative scopes.
Unusual volumes of getServerData, configuration read, or tenant metadata calls originating from low-privilege service accounts.

Detection Strategies

Review Carbon audit logs and HTTP access logs for authenticated calls to admin service URIs, then correlate the calling user's role assignments in the user store.
Baseline legitimate administrative traffic by source IP, user, and endpoint, then alert on deviations from that baseline.
Inspect authentication tokens and session context for scope mismatches between the requested operation and the user's granted permissions.

Monitoring Recommendations

Forward WSO2 Carbon logs (wso2carbon.log, audit.log, http_access_*.log) to a centralized SIEM for retention and correlation.
Alert on any HTTP 200 response for admin service endpoints returned to non-admin users.
Monitor management interface reachability and restrict which network segments can reach ports 9443 and 9763.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-9804

Immediate Actions Required

Apply the WSO2 security updates referenced in advisory WSO2-2025-4503 for each deployed product and version.
Restrict network access to the Carbon management console and internal admin services so only trusted administrative networks can reach them.
Audit user accounts and remove or downgrade unnecessary local and federated identities, especially service accounts with weak or shared credentials.

Patch Information

WSO2 has published product-specific fixes and WUM/U2 updates through the WSO2 Security Advisory WSO2-2025-4503. Administrators should identify each affected product version in their environment against the advisory's fix matrix and apply the corresponding update. Restart the Carbon server after applying patches to reload authorization handlers.

Workarounds

Place the WSO2 management interface behind a reverse proxy or firewall rule that only permits administrator source IP ranges.
Enforce strong password and MFA policies on all Carbon user accounts to reduce the risk of low-privilege credential compromise.
Where feasible, disable unused SOAP Admin Services in carbon.xml and remove non-essential System REST API components.

bash

# Example: restrict WSO2 management port to an admin subnet using iptables
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9443 -s 10.10.20.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9443 -j DROP