Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 Privilege Escalation via POST params
CVE-2016-20034 Published on March 15, 2026

Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 Privilege Escalation via user edit
Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 contains a privilege escalation vulnerability that allows authenticated read-only users to elevate privileges to administrator by manipulating POST parameters. Attackers can send POST requests to the user edit endpoint with accessLevel set to 'admin' and advUser parameters set to 'true' and 'on' to gain administrative access.

Vendor Advisory NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2016-20034 is exploitable with network access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. Public availability of a proof of concept (POC) exploit exists for CVE-2016-20034. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
LOW
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
HIGH
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Weakness Type

What is a Session Riding Vulnerability?

The web application does not, or can not, sufficiently verify whether a well-formed, valid, consistent request was intentionally provided by the user who submitted the request. When a web server is designed to receive a request from a client without any mechanism for verifying that it was intentionally sent, then it might be possible for an attacker to trick a client into making an unintentional request to the web server which will be treated as an authentic request. This can be done via a URL, image load, XMLHttpRequest, etc. and can result in exposure of data or unintended code execution.

CVE-2016-20034 has been classified to as a Session Riding vulnerability or weakness.


Products Associated with CVE-2016-20034

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Wowza Streaming Engine
 

Affected Versions

Wowza Media Systems, LLC. Wowza Streaming Engine Version 4.5.0 is affected by CVE-2016-20034

Exploit Probability

EPSS
0.04%
Percentile
12.39%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.