Grafana Labs Grafana: authentication bypass flaw under attack

What is affected

Grafana Labs Grafana is mostly run by companies, schools and public bodies, not on home computers. You are unlikely to have it yourself, but organisations that hold your data may. Breaches that start with flaws like this one are how personal data ends up leaked.

Grafana contains an authentication bypass vulnerability that allows authenticated and unauthenticated users to view and delete all snapshot data, potentially resulting in complete snapshot data loss.

What an attacker can do

This is a authentication bypass flaw. It lets an attacker get in without a valid username and password and act as a legitimate user, often as an administrator.

How it is reached

Over the internet or network

Access the attacker needs

No account needed

Does the victim have to do something?

No, works without the victim doing anything

What to do

1. At home: nothing to install. Keep your own devices updated and use a different password for every service, so that a breach at one organisation does not open your other accounts.
2. If you administer Grafana Labs Grafana at work: apply the vendor's fix or mitigation now and review logs for signs of compromise, because the flaw was being exploited before it was listed.
3. If the product is past its support date and no fix exists, take it off the internet or retire it.

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Vendor advisories and fixes

• grafana.comgrafana.com/blog/2021/10/05/grafana-7.5.11-and-8.1.6-released-with-critical-security-fix/

How urgent is it

CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on August 25, 2022, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by September 15, 2022, a deadline that has already passed. That deadline does not bind anyone else, but it shows how seriously the agency rates it.

The EPSS model estimates a 100% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 100.0% of all scored vulnerabilities.

Its CVSS severity score is 7.3 out of 10 (high), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.

Technical description

Grafana is an open source data visualization platform. In affected versions unauthenticated and authenticated users are able to view the snapshot with the lowest database key by accessing the literal paths: /dashboard/snapshot/:key, or /api/snapshots/:key. If the snapshot "public_mode" configuration setting is set to true (vs default of false), unauthenticated users are able to delete the snapshot with the lowest database key by accessing the literal path: /api/snapshots-delete/:deleteKey. Regardless of the snapshot "public_mode" setting, authenticated users are able to delete the snapshot with the lowest database key by accessing the literal paths: /api/snapshots/:key, or /api/snapshots-delete/:deleteKey. The combination of deletion and viewing enables a complete walk through all snapshot data while resulting in complete snapshot data loss. This issue has been resolved in versions 8.1.6 and 7.5.11. If for some reason you cannot upgrade you can use a reverse proxy or similar to block access to the literal paths: /api/snapshots/:key, /api/snapshots-delete/:deleteKey, /dashboard/snapshot/:key, and /api/snapshots/:key. They have no normal function and can be disabled without side effects.