Winter CMS is a content management system built on the Laravel PHP framework. In versions up to and including 1.2.12, the CMS section's Theme Editor AJAX handlers did not enforce per-template-type permission checks, allowing a backend user with any single CMS permission to act on template types outside their authorized scope. The CMS controller gated access to the section as a whole using OR-logic across its five permissions, but individual handlers such as onSave(), onDelete(), and onDeleteTemplates() did not verify that the user held the specific permission for the requested template type, so a user with only cms.manage_pages could craft AJAX requests to delete layouts, modify partials, or read content files. Separately, the AssetList widget was registered for any user who passed the controller gate regardless of the cms.manage_assets permission, and its onUpload() handler omitted the theme-validation call present on the other mutating handlers, permitting unauthorized file uploads into the active theme's asset directory. Exploitation requires an authenticated backend account holding at least one of the CMS Theme Editor permissions. This issue is fixed in version 1.2.13.

Affected: Packagist: winter/wn-cms-module

### Impact

Affected versions of Winter CMS did not enforce per-template-type permission checks in the CMS section's AJAX handlers. The CMS controller (`Cms\Controllers\Index`) used OR-logic across its five permissions (`cms.manage_pages`, `cms.manage_partials`, `cms.manage_layouts`, `cms.manage_content`, `cms.manage_assets`) to control access to the section as a whole, but individual handlers such as `onSave()`, `onDelete()`, and `onDeleteTemplates()` did not verify that the authenticated user holds the specific permission corresponding to the requested template type.

This allowed a backend user with any single Theme Editor permission (e.g. `cms.manage_pages`) to craft AJAX requests targeting template types outside their authorized scope — for example, deleting layouts, modifying partials, or reading content files.

In addition, the `AssetList` widget was registered for all users who passed the controller gate regardless of whether they held the `cms.manage_assets` permission, and its `onUpload()` handler was missing the `validateRequestTheme()` call that is present on all other mutating handlers in the same widget. This allowed unauthorized file uploads into the active theme's asset directory.

To actively exploit this security issue, an attacker would need access to the Backend with a user account with any of the following permissions:

- `cms.manage_pages` - `cms.manage_partials` - `cms.manage_layouts` - `cms.manage_content` - `cms.manage_assets`

The Winter CMS maintai…