Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessAuthenticate as low-privilege Splunk user
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DeliveryCraft XXE payload in dashboard tab label
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ExploitSubmit dashboard to trigger XML parsing
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ExecutionEntity expansion exhausts resources
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ImpactDenial of service on Splunk instance
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A02:2025 - Security Misconfiguration
ASVS 5.0
V13 - Configuration XML entity recursion limits
|
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires an authenticated Splunk account on Splunk Enterprise (below 9.4.4, 9.3.6, 9.2.8, or 10.0.0) or Splunk Cloud Platform (below 9.3.2411.108, 9.3.2408.118, 9.2.2406.123); the account may be low-privilege and explicitly does NOT need the 'admin' or 'power' roles. The specific attack surface is the dashboard tab label field, which processes attacker-supplied XML and permits external entity injection. Limiting factors: valid credentials are mandatory (PR:L, so no unauthenticated access), there is no user-interaction requirement, and impact is confined to denial of service with no data exposure - reducing realistic risk to insiders or attackers who have already obtained a foothold account. |
| Impact | This is a genuine but moderate-priority issue, not a top-tier emergency. The CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) indicates network-reachable, low-complexity exploitation, but PR:L confirms an authenticated low-privilege Splunk account is required - the description clarifies this user need not hold the 'admin' or 'power' roles. Impact is limited strictly to availability (A:H) with no confidentiality or integrity loss, consistent with the described DoS-only outcome of the XXE. Exploitation-probability signals are low and mutually consistent: EPSS is only 0.06% (19th percentile), there is no CISA KEV listing, and no public exploit was identified in the provided data. The combination of required authentication, DoS-only impact, and very low EPSS argues against this being a widely-weaponized target despite its network attack vector. The scored CVSS of 6.5 (Medium) aligns well with the vector and the authenticated/availability-only nature of the flaw; no key signals conflict. The main caveat is that this requires an attacker to already possess valid (even if low-privilege) Splunk credentials, which materially narrows the realistic threat to insiders or post-compromise scenarios. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An authenticated low-privilege Splunk user (without admin or power roles) submits a dashboard containing a crafted XML external entity payload in the dashboard tab label field. The XXE triggers resource exhaustion or entity-expansion processing that degrades or denies service to the Splunk instance. No public exploit code was identified at time of analysis, and the low attack complexity means exploitation is straightforward once valid credentials are held. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv2 – Oct 18, 2026
Authenticated low-privilege users can cause denial of service in Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud Platform by injecting XML external entities through the dashboard tab label field. The flaw affects Splunk Enterprise below 9.4.4, 9.3.6, and 9.2.8, plus Splunk Cloud Platform below 9.3.2411.108, 9.3.2408.118, and 9.2.2406.123, and requires only a valid non-admin account. Vendor patches are available, EPSS is low at 0.06% (19th percentile), and no public exploit has been identified at time of analysis.
Earlier versions of this analysis (1)
RemediationAI
Upgrade Splunk Enterprise to 9.4.4, 9.3.6, 9.2.8, or later; Splunk Cloud Platform deployments should be at or above 9.3.2411.108, 9.3.2408.118, or 9.2.2406.123, with cloud updates typically applied by Splunk. The vendor advisory is https://advisory.splunk.com/advisories/SVD-2025-1004. If immediate upgrade is not possible, restrict dashboard creation and editing permissions so only trusted administrator roles can set tab labels, and review custom dashboards for untrusted XML; this reduces exposure but limits self-service dashboard functionality for low-privilege users. Where the XML parser is configurable, disable external entity and DTD processing as a compensating control, with the trade-off that legitimate XML features relying on entities may break.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 2 packages in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Splunk dashboards are XML-backed configuration objects, and the tab label field is processed as part of dashboard rendering and editing. The issue is an XML external entity (XXE) injection class flaw mapped to CWE-776, which covers improper restriction of recursive entity references in DTDs and XML entity expansion. An authenticated user who can set a dashboard tab label can supply XML that references external entities or recursively expands entities, causing resource exhaustion and denial of service. The CVSS vector AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H confirms network reachability, low privileges, no user interaction, high availability impact, and no confidentiality or integrity impact. CPE data identifies Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud Platform as the affected products.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Network-reachable dashboard feature (AV:N, AC:L) requires an authenticated low-privilege account (PR:L), with no UI, and XXE yields DoS only, so C:N/I:N/A:H.
Primary rating from NVD.
CVSS VectorNVD
Lifecycle Timeline
4DescriptionNVD
In Splunk Enterprise versions below 9.4.4, 9.3.6, and 9.2.8, and Splunk Cloud Platform versions below 9.3.2411.108, 9.3.2408.118 and 9.2.2406.123, a low privilege user that does not hold the "admin" or "power" Splunk roles could perform an extensible markup language (XML) external entity (XXE) injection through the dashboard tab label field. The XXE injection has the potential to cause denial of service (DoS) attacks.
Executive ViewAI
Organizations using Splunk Enterprise should be aware of moderate risk from CVE-2025-20369 rated CVSS 4.6. Exploitation could compromise the security of affected deployments. Organizations should apply vendor updates when available and monitor for exploitation.
Apply vendor patch. If patching is delayed: restrict network access and enable monitoring.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
XML External Entity (XXE) attacks exploit XML parsers that process Document Type Definitions (DTDs) without proper restrictions.
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
The (1) TLS and (2) DTLS implementations in OpenSSL 1.0.1 before 1.0.1g do not properly handle Heartbeat Extension packe
Unauthenticated arbitrary file write in Splunk Enterprise (below 10.2.4 and 10.0.7) and Splunk Cloud Platform (below 10.
curl 7.75.0 through 7.76.1 suffers from a use-after-free vulnerability resulting in already freed memory being used when
curl < 7.84.0 supports "chained" HTTP compression algorithms, meaning that a serverresponse can be compressed multiple t
In Splunk Enterprise versions below 9.2.2, 9.1.5, and 9.0.10, a low-privileged user that does not hold the admin or powe
In Splunk Enterprise versions below 9.0.7 and 9.1.2, Splunk Enterprise does not safely sanitize extensible stylesheet la
In versions of Splunk Enterprise below 9.0.5, 8.2.11, and 8.1.14, and Splunk Cloud Platform below version 9.0.2303.100,
In Splunk Enterprise versions below 8.2.9, 8.1.12, and 9.0.2, an authenticated user can execute arbitrary code through t
When curl < 7.84.0 saves cookies, alt-svc and hsts data to local files, it makes the operation atomic by finalizing the
SQLite 1.0.12 through 3.39.x before 3.39.2 sometimes allows an array-bounds overflow if billions of bytes are used in a
A vulnerability exists in curl <7.87.0 HSTS check that could be bypassed to trick it to keep using HTTP. Rated high seve
When doing HTTP(S) transfers, libcurl might erroneously use the read callback (`CURLOPT_READFUNCTION`) to ask for data t
EUVD-2025-32718
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub PoC
Exploit-DB