Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
A Kimai authorization weakness can let a team lead, or another account with powerful timesheet permissions, access timesheets across the entire system instead of only within its team. This may expose employee time records and allow unauthorized changes or permanent deletion. Ordinary ROLE_USER accounts are reported as correctly restricted.
Executive priority
Treat this as an urgent access-control issue where affected Kimai instances contain team leads or delegated timesheet administrators. Prioritize version verification, permission reduction, log preservation, and upgrading. Investigate possible unauthorized changes or deletions because compromise could affect confidentiality, payroll-related integrity, operational records, and recoverability.
Technical view
In Kimai versions before 2.56.0, TimesheetVoter::voteOnAttribute() maps authorization to own_timesheet or other_timesheet permissions without enforcing team membership. Authenticated ROLE_TEAMLEAD accounts, or roles with edit_other_timesheet or delete_other_timesheet, may read, alter, or permanently delete any user's timesheets through the API. Sequential timesheet identifiers increase discoverability.
Likely exposure
Exposure is limited to Kimai deployments before 2.56.0 containing ROLE_TEAMLEAD accounts or custom roles with the named cross-user permissions. API reachability increases practical risk. ROLE_USER-only accounts are not reported as affected. The supplied CVSS vector states PR:N, but the description requires authentication; administrators should treat that discrepancy cautiously.
Exploitation context
The supplied sources do not establish active exploitation, and the CVE is not identified as being in CISA KEV. Exploitation nevertheless appears operationally plausible because affected permissions are commonly assigned to trusted users and timesheet identifiers are sequential. No exploit code or confirmed campaign evidence is provided.
Researcher notes
The core issue is missing team-membership enforcement rather than an unauthenticated authentication bypass. The maintainers reportedly characterize the behavior as consistent with the documented permission model, creating ambiguity about expected authorization boundaries. The supplied record nevertheless identifies versions before 2.56.0 as affected. Confirm behavior and remediation against the current vendor advisory before final risk acceptance.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade affected Kimai installations to version 2.56.0 or later after checking vendor guidance.
- Temporarily remove unnecessary edit_other_timesheet and delete_other_timesheet permissions from non-administrator roles.
- Restrict API access to trusted networks or authenticated gateways where operationally feasible.
- Preserve and review audit, API, and application logs before making access-control changes.
Validation and detection
- Inventory every Kimai instance and confirm its exact installed version.
- Identify accounts holding ROLE_TEAMLEAD or roles containing the affected cross-user permissions.
- Verify in staging that team leads cannot access or alter out-of-team timesheets.
- Review logs for cross-team timesheet reads, modifications, enumeration patterns, and permanent deletions.
- Confirm backups can restore deleted timesheet records and related audit evidence.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-863: Authorization and privilege behavior lookup
Authorization weaknesses can support privilege escalation and valid-account review, depending on exploit path. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupPrivilege behavior lookup
The CVE wording references privilege impact, so privilege escalation and authorization behavior review may help. This is a Glexia inferred lookup path, not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, or CVE Program mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2026-80202 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.3 (4.0)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
SSVC decision data
CVSS vector scores
2 official scoresWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N——VulnCheckCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H2.85.9VulnCheckVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 4.0 score
9.3CriticalVector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Base CVSS 3.1 score
8.8HighVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Vulnerability timeline
Timeline events are normalized from CVE metadata, CNA source timelines, ADP timelines, and KEV metadata when present.
- CVE reservedCVE Program
The CVE ID was reserved by the assigning CNA.
- CVE publishedCVE Program
The CVE record was published.
- CVE updatedCVE Program
The CVE record metadata indicates this as the latest update time.
ADP provider summaries
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- GitHub Security Advisory (GHSA-9g2q-w3w2-vf7q)CVE reference, VulnCheck · vendor-advisory
- VulnCheck Advisory: Kimai before 2.56.0 Authorization Bypass via TimesheetVoterCVE reference, VulnCheck · third-party-advisory
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Incorrect Authorization
Incorrect Authorization represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.