Vulnerability · Published Nov 2, 2026 · Assigned by VulnCheck
CVE-2026-120442ape-volo-admin before 3.6.1 Hardcoded JWT Signing Key Authentication Bypass
Critical 9.8
In plain English
A critical-severity security flaw in ape-volo-admin from xianhc. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.7% (higher than 77% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: Nuclei.
Official description
ape-volo-admin before 3.6.1 contains an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to forge administrator tokens using a hardcoded JWT signing key in appsettings.json. Attackers can sign tokens offline with the jti claim set to the seeded administrator id to gain full API control over users, roles, permissions and data.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| xianhc | ape-volo-admin | 0 – before 3.6.1 |
Weakness: CWE-1394 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
- https://github.com/xianhc/ape-volo-admin/issues/36 issue-tracking
- https://github.com/xianhc/ape-volo-admin/commit/938f7ec58047f0c63123dc155d6a033910f00933 patch
- ape-volo-admin V3.6.1 Release Notes release-notes
- https://github.com/xianhc/ape-volo-admin/blob/V3.5.2/Ape.Volo.Api/appsettings.json#L4-L10 technical-description
- https://github.com/xianhc/ape-volo-admin/blob/V3.5.2/Ape.Volo.Infrastructure/Extensions/AuthorizationExtensions.cs#L50-L60 technical-description
- https://github.com/xianhc/ape-volo-admin/blob/V3.5.2/Ape.Volo.Infrastructure/Authentication/PermissionHandler.cs#L130-L172 technical-description
- https://hackmd.io/@hieuPenguinnn/ape-volo-admin-hardcoded-jwt-secret-admin-token-forgery technical-description
- VulnCheck Advisory: ape-volo-admin before 3.6.1 Hardcoded JWT Signing Key Authentication Bypass third-party-advisory