Summary
Grafana Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Today we are releasing Grafana 8.3.5 and 7.5.15. This patch release includes MEDIUM severity security fix for Cross Site Request Forgery for Grafana.
Release v.8.3.5, only containing security fixes:
Release v.7.5.15, only containing security fixes:
CSRF (CVE-2022-21703)
On Jan. 18, security researchers jub0bs and abrahack contacted Grafana to disclose a CSRF vulnerability which allows anonymous attackers to elevate their privileges by mounting cross-origin attacks against authenticated high-privilege Grafana users (for example, Editors or Admins).
We believe that this vulnerability is rated at CVSS 6.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N).
Affected versions with MEDIUM severity
All Grafana >=3.0-beta1 versions are affected by this vulnerability.
Solutions and mitigations
All installations after Grafana v3.0-beta1 should be upgraded as soon as possible.
Note that if you are running Grafana behind any reverse proxy, you need to make sure that you are passing the original Host and Origin headers from the client request to Grafana.
In the case of Apache Server, you need to add ProxyPreserveHost on in your proxy configuration. In case of NGINX, you can need to add proxy_set_header Host $http_host; in your configuration.
Appropriate patches have been applied to Grafana Cloud and as always, we closely coordinated with all cloud providers licensed to offer Grafana Pro. They have received early notification under embargo and confirmed that their offerings are secure at the time of this announcement. This is applicable to Amazon Managed Grafana.
Timeline and postmortem
Here is a detailed timeline starting from when we originally learned of the issue. All times in UTC.
- 2022-01-18 03:00 Issue submitted by external researchers
- 2022-01-18 17:25 Vulnerability confirmed reproducible
- 2022-01-19 07:40 CVSS score confirmed 6.8 at maximum and MEDIUM impact
- 2022-01-19 07:40 Begin mitigation for Grafana Cloud
- 2022-01-19 17:00 CVE requested
- 2022-01-19 19:50 GitHub issues CVE-2022-21703
- 2022-01-21 10:50 PR with fix opened
- 2022-01-21 14:13 Private release planned for 2022-01-25, and public release planned for 2022-02-01.
- 2022-01-25 12:00 Private release
- 2022-02-01 12:00 During the public release process, we realized that private 7.x release was incomplete. Abort public release, send second private release to customers using 7.x
- 2022-02-08 12:00 Public release
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank jub0bs and abrahack for responsibly disclosing the vulnerability.
Reporting security issues
If you think you have found a security vulnerability, please send a report to [email protected]. This address can be used for all of Grafana Labs' open source and commercial products (including, but not limited to Grafana, Grafana Cloud, Grafana Enterprise, and grafana.com). We can accept only vulnerability reports at this address. We would prefer that you encrypt your message to us by using our PGP key. The key fingerprint is
F988 7BEA 027A 049F AE8E 5CAA D125 8932 BE24 C5CA
The key is available from keyserver.ubuntu.com.
Security announcements
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Impact
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability for privilege escalation by tricking an authenticated user into inviting the attacker as a new user with high privileges.
A victim's authenticated browser session is used to submit forged requests to an application that cannot distinguish them from legitimate ones. Typical impact: state-changing actions performed as the victim without their consent.
CVE-2022-21703 has a CVSS score of 6.8 (Medium). The vector is network-reachable, no privileges required, and user interaction required. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (7.5.15, 8.3.5); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
Already deployed Kodem?
See it in your environmentNew to Kodem? Get a demo →Remediation advice
github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web to 7.5.15 or later; github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web to 8.3.5 or later
Kodem Kai can prioritize this vulnerability in your dependency tree and generate a fix recommendation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2022-21703? CVE-2022-21703 is a medium-severity cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web (go), affecting versions >= 3.0-beta1, < 7.5.15. It is fixed in 7.5.15, 8.3.5. A victim's authenticated browser session is used to submit forged requests to an application that cannot distinguish them from legitimate ones.
- How severe is CVE-2022-21703? CVE-2022-21703 has a CVSS score of 6.8 (Medium). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web are affected by CVE-2022-21703? github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web (go) versions >= 3.0-beta1, < 7.5.15 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2022-21703? Yes. CVE-2022-21703 is fixed in 7.5.15, 8.3.5. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2022-21703 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2022-21703 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2022-21703 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2022-21703?
- Upgrade
github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/webto 7.5.15 or later - Upgrade
github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/webto 8.3.5 or later
- Upgrade