Not sure if this is actually a bug or not. AbstractProject.doConfigSubmit modifies the publishersList of an upstream project regardless of your permissions on that project. I would expect that you would need to have CONFIGURE permission on it. Not clear that there is a specific security threat from adding a BuildTrigger to an arbitrary project, but it will at a minimum result in a config.xml change from an unauthorized user, which might raise eyebrows.

BuildTrigger.DescriptorImpl.doCheck also ought to issue an error if you have no CONFIGURE permission. doAutoCompleteUpstreamProjects can probably be left alone - complete everything we can see but show an error if you cannot really touch it.

Also doCheck neglects to check AbstractProject.isConfigurable as doConfigSubmit does.