# 2.13. CVE-2020-1955: Apache CouchDB Remote Privilege Escalation

Date:

  19.05.2020

Affected:

  3.0.0

Severity:

  Medium

Vendor:

  The Apache Software Foundation

## 2.13.1. Description

CouchDB version 3.0.0 shipped with a new configuration setting that governs access control to the entire database server called require_valid_user_except_for_up. It was meant as an extension to the long-standing setting require_valid_user, which in turn requires that any and all requests to CouchDB will have to be made with valid credentials, effectively forbidding any anonymous requests.

The new require_valid_user_except_for_up is an off-by-default setting that was meant to allow requiring valid credentials for all endpoints except for the /_up endpoint.

However, the implementation of this made an error that led to not enforcing credentials on any endpoint, when enabled.

CouchDB versions 3.0.1 and 3.1.0 fix this issue.

## 2.13.2. Mitigation

Users who have not enabled require_valid_user_except_for_up are not affected.

Users who have it enabled can either disable it again, or upgrade to CouchDB versions 3.0.1 and 3.1.0

## 2.13.3. Credit

This issue was discovered by Stefan Klein.