You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.Dismiss alert
{{ message }}
Repository navigation
BUG: User in legal group and with staff status is effectively a superuser #266
Describe the bug
Users that are assigned to the "Legal" group and have Staff Status enable, currently posses the following permissions among others, as documented by the permission matrix:
Change dataspace
Add users
Change users
This appears to have unintended or at least unexpected consequences from the perspective of DejaCode users. Users with the permissions as described above can perform the following actions:
Increase their privilege by making themselves a superuser
Remove permissions from higher privileged accounts such as superusers
Deactivating higher privileged users such as superusers
As such assigning a user to the "Legal" group and giving them Staff Status is effectively the equivalent of making them a superuser.
To Reproduce
Create a user
Assign them to the "Legal" group
Enable Staff Status
Log in as the user you have created
Check that you can escalate your own privileges and edit superusers
Expected behavior
Users should not be able to give themselves higher permissions
Users should not be able to edit user accounts that have higher permissions than themselves
It is questionable that the "Legal" group needs to manage the dataspace and users at all, as this is an administrative task
The user admin now prevents privilege escalation by non-superusers:
Only superusers can view, change, or disable users.
Non-superusers with the "add user" permission can still create users, with two limits:
they cannot set the superuser status;
they can only assign groups they belong to.
2. "Legal" group permissions
The "Legal" group in the initial data no longer has these 3 permissions:
add_dejacodeuser
change_dejacodeuser
change_dataspace
New installations will get the updated group in the next release. On an existing installation, remove these 3 permissions from the "Legal" group in the admin: Groups > Legal.
Activity
[-]BUG:[/-][+]BUG: User in legal group and with staff status is effectively a superuser[/+]tdruez commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Hey @rogu-beta, as usual, thanks for the report!
This is now fixed in two places:
1. Code changes (#595)
The user admin now prevents privilege escalation by non-superusers:
2. "Legal" group permissions
The "Legal" group in the initial data no longer has these 3 permissions:
add_dejacodeuserchange_dejacodeuserchange_dataspaceNew installations will get the updated group in the next release. On an existing installation, remove these 3 permissions from the "Legal" group in the admin: Groups > Legal.