31 MarkLogic Server Flaws Patched — Five Critical, Two Hand Delegated Admins the Keys

Progress Software has disclosed 31 vulnerabilities in MarkLogic Server, its enterprise NoSQL/XML database, and rated five of them critical. The most serious ones don't open the door to anonymous attackers. Instead, they let an account that was given only part of the management role, such as a forest manager, user manager or delegated database admin, turn that partial access into full, persistent administrator control of the server.

The patched builds are MarkLogic 11.3.7 (the LTS line) and MarkLogic 12.1.0. Both have been available since 10 September 2026, about a month before the CVE records went public on 12 October.

What happened

Every critical issue needs the attacker to already hold some privilege or code-execution path. That still matters: in many organizations, delegated roles go to application teams, integrations and service accounts that nobody treats as "admin".

The other 26 flaws (24 high, 2 medium) mostly depend on configuration:

• SAML: an unauthenticated attacker could get a forged assertion accepted (CVE-2026-85962). On 11.x, the SAML parser could also resolve external entities (CVE-2026-85957).
• OAuth: tokens with the wrong issuer/audience could be accepted (CVE-2026-85958).
• Kerberos (password-based): an attacker on the network could impersonate the KDC (CVE-2026-85972).
• Cloud: authenticated access to internal cloud services and credentials on Azure and Linux cloud deployments (CVE-2026-85951, CVE-2026-85952).
• Logging: secrets written to diagnostic logs, including AWS keys when an IAM trace was enabled (CVE-2026-85949, CVE-2026-85961). Successful logins were not always audited (CVE-2026-85959).
• Query Console: a malicious page could run code as a logged-in user (CVE-2026-85960), and users could read arbitrary server files (CVE-2026-85964).
• Legacy components: SSRF in OpsDirector (CVE-2026-85963) and file access via InfoStudio (CVE-2026-85953). Both components are removed in the new releases.
• The highest of the "high" flaws, CVE-2026-85954 (8.6), allows privilege escalation through values passed to certain XQuery functions.

Why it matters

• No exploitation is known yet. Progress has not said any of the 31 were used in attacks, and none were in CISA's KEV catalog as of 13 October 2026. Patch now, while that's still true.
• August's patch isn't enough. This is the second MarkLogic batch in about two months. The August fixes (11.3.6 / 12.0.3), which included the 9.8-rated unauthenticated ODBC auth bypass CVE-2026-9192, are themselves affected by the new flaws.
• The 12.x line has no 12.0 patch. If you're on 12.0.x, you have to move to 12.1.0, which also brings feature changes.
• No workaround is published for teams that can't upgrade right away.
• Upgrading may not undo a past compromise. Progress hasn't said whether an admin account already created through CVE-2026-85947 is removed by the upgrade.

What to do

1. Inventory every MarkLogic Server instance and version. Anything on 11.x below 11.3.7 or 12.x below 12.1.0 is affected.
2. Before upgrading, review delegated privileges. Audit who holds forest-management, user-management and delegated DB-admin rights, and every role with xdmp-eval-in. Remove anything that isn't strictly needed.
3. Hunt for persistence. List admin-level users and roles and compare them against a known-good baseline. Treat unexplained admin accounts as an incident. Keep in mind that login auditing was unreliable (CVE-2026-85959).
4. Read the incompatibility notes first. The fixes change behavior: xdmp:eval-in() now also needs xdmp-eval, reading Authorization headers needs a new privilege, /manage/v2/packages, InfoStudio and OpsDirector are gone, older mlcp clients fail with XDMP-ISOLATED (upgrade them to 11.3.7 / 12.1.0), 11.3.7 drops Amazon Linux 2, and five new reserved role/user names can break the upgrade. Test in staging.
5. Clean up after the upgrade. Rotate or recreate ErrorLog.txt / AuditLog.txt so they pick up the new 0640 permissions. Provide a keytab so the Kerberos fix actually runs. Rotate any AWS or cloud credentials that may have reached logs.
6. Until you've patched, keep management, Query Console and App Server ports off the internet and behind VPN/allow-lists, and disable SAML/OAuth/legacy features you don't use.

Not sure whether your MarkLogic or other database tier is exposed? A 4Tify vulnerability assessment maps it from the outside in and gives you a prioritized fix list.

Originally reported by The Hacker News. Rewritten and analyzed by the 4Tify Team from Progress Software's CVE records and upgrade notes.