Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
-
ReconAttacker authenticates with low-privilege Kibana account
-
DeliveryCrafts Vega visualization with forged Kibana API request
-
ExploitSaves visualization to shared or accessible dashboard
-
InstallVictim administrator opens dashboard
-
C2Victim browser renders Vega spec and issues forged request
-
ExecuteKibana processes authenticated request as victim
-
ImpactPrivilege escalation or data access achieved
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V3 - Web Frontend Security Anti-CSRF tokens, SameSite cookies
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Initial Access The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires three concurrent conditions: the attacker must hold a Kibana account with at minimum the 'create visualizations' permission - no higher role is needed; a victim with a higher-privilege Kibana session (such as an administrator or operator role) must open or view a dashboard or panel that renders the malicious visualization; and the victim's browser must have an active, authenticated Kibana session at the time of rendering. The CVSS UI:R metric confirms that victim interaction - specifically navigating to and rendering the malicious visualization - is mandatory; the attack cannot succeed passively or remotely without this step. The PR:L metric confirms that attacker authentication to Kibana is required. Deployments where Kibana's Vega visualization type has been globally disabled in configuration are not exploitable via this vector. There is no network-level exploitation path independent of the victim's browser action. |
| Impact | The CVSS 7.3 score (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N) reflects a meaningful but bounded threat: the attack is network-accessible and low-complexity, but is gated by two requirements - attacker possession of a low-privilege Kibana account (PR:L) and victim interaction in the form of opening a shared dashboard (UI:R). The C:H and I:H metrics are significant: a successful exploitation can result in full authenticated session abuse of the victim's Kibana context. No EPSS score was provided in the input data, so exploitation probability cannot be quantified; the absence of a CISA KEV listing and the lack of any disclosed POC suggest exploitation has not been observed at scale as of time of analysis. Despite these mitigating signals, even a mid-sized municipal IT team in inowroclaw operating a Kibana cluster for log aggregation or SIEM purposes should treat this as urgent, because the privilege escalation path requires only that any single low-privileged user be able to create visualizations - a capability commonly granted to analysts and operators. The asymmetry between the attacker's entry requirement (low-privilege account) and the potential impact (admin-level session abuse) drives real-world urgency beyond what the raw CVSS score may suggest. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An analyst account holding Kibana visualization creation rights crafts a Vega specification that issues a POST request to a Kibana role-assignment or API-key management endpoint, embedding it as a saved visualization in a shared dashboard. When a Kibana administrator opens that dashboard in their authenticated session, the browser silently executes the forged request under the administrator's credentials, potentially granting the analyst elevated role assignments or leaking session-scoped data. No public POC has been identified, but the attack pattern is well-documented under CAPEC-62 and requires no advanced tooling beyond knowledge of Kibana's REST API surface. |
Get an e-mail when this CVE is exploited, patched or re-scored. Free account.
Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Aug 13, 2026
Privilege escalation in Kibana arises from insufficient CSRF protection in the Vega visualization engine, affecting all versions prior to 8.19.20 and 9.4.5. Any Kibana user with visualization creation rights can embed a specially crafted Vega specification that, when rendered by a higher-privileged user's browser, silently issues authenticated HTTP requests to Kibana under the victim's session credentials. No public exploit code has been identified and no CISA KEV listing exists at time of analysis, though the low attack complexity and widely deployed nature of the product make this a meaningful remediation priority.
RemediationAI
Upgrade Kibana to version 8.19.20 (for users on the 8.x branch) or 9.4.5 (for users on the 9.x branch) as documented in Elastic's security advisory ESA-2026-99 at https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-8-19-20-and-9-4-5-security-update-esa-2026-99/389529. If immediate patching is not feasible, the most targeted compensating control is to revoke or restrict the visualization creation privilege to fully trusted users and administrators only, eliminating the low-privilege attacker entry point entirely; note this will disrupt self-service analyst dashboarding workflows. A more aggressive mitigation is to disable the Vega visualization type entirely in Kibana's configuration, which removes the specific attack surface but eliminates all custom Vega-based analytics for all users. Enforcing strict Content-Security-Policy headers at a reverse proxy layer may constrain some request classes but is not a reliable standalone CSRF defense and should not be treated as a substitute for patching.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Kibana (cpe:2.3:a:elastic:kibana:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*) is Elastic's browser-based analytics and visualization dashboard for Elasticsearch data. Its Vega visualization feature allows users to define custom visualizations using the Vega declarative grammar, which supports HTTP request specifications capable of targeting arbitrary URLs - including Kibana's own REST API endpoints. The root cause is CWE-352 (Cross-Site Request Forgery): Kibana fails to enforce origin validation or anti-CSRF token checks on state-changing API endpoints when requests are issued from within a Vega specification rendered in another user's browser context. CAPEC-62 describes this broader attack class: the browser's implicit credential attachment (session cookies, tokens) to the Kibana origin allows the forged request to carry full victim authentication without the attacker possessing those credentials. The scope is unchanged (S:U) because the forged requests remain within the Kibana application boundary rather than pivoting to a distinct system.
Know when Kibana gets its next vulnerability
- Watch products and get an email when something new is published
- Check this CVE against your own stack and servers
- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
No credit card · 7-day full trial
Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Attacker requires a low-privilege Kibana account to plant the payload (PR:L) and victim must actively open the visualization (UI:R), with full session abuse yielding high C/I impact and no availability effect.
Primary rating from Vendor (elastic).
CVSS VectorVendor: elastic
DescriptionCVE.org
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CWE-352) in Kibana can lead to privilege escalation via Cross Site Request Forgery (CAPEC-62). A user who is permitted to create visualizations can save a specially crafted Vega visualization that, when it is opened by another user, causes authenticated requests to be issued to Kibana in the context of the viewing user's session.
Executive ViewAI
Kibana contains a privilege escalation vulnerability where visualization creators can silently compromise administrator-level accounts and access sensitive data. This creates significant insider-threat risk for organizations relying on Kibana for analytics and business intelligence. All Kibana deployments prior to versions 8.19.20 and 9.4.5 require immediate action.
Apply vendor patch: Kibana 8.19.20 or 9.4.5 or later.
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
Cross-Site Request Forgery exploits the automatic credential inclusion behavior of web browsers.
Privilege escalation occurs when an attacker leverages flaws in access control mechanisms to gain permissions beyond what they were originally granted.
Kibana versions before 5.6.15 and 6.6.1 contain an arbitrary code execution flaw in the Timelion visualizer. Rated criti
Kibana versions 6.7.0 to 6.8.8 and 7.0.0 to 7.6.2 contain a prototype pollution flaw in the Upgrade Assistant. Rated hig
Kibana versions before 6.4.3 and 5.6.13 contain an arbitrary file inclusion flaw in the Console plugin. Rated critical s
Prototype pollution in Kibana leads to arbitrary code execution via a crafted file upload and specifically crafted HTTP
Kibana versions 4.0 to 4.6, 5.0 to 5.6.12, and 6.0 to 6.4.2 contain an error in the way authorization credentials are us
A Prototype pollution vulnerability in Kibana leads to arbitrary code execution via crafted HTTP requests to machine lea
Kibana versions before 6.6.1 contain an arbitrary code execution flaw in the security audit logger. Rated critical sever
Prototype Pollution in Kibana can lead to code injection via unrestricted file upload combined with path traversal. Rate
Authorization bypass in Kibana's Fleet package installation process lets an authenticated user who holds delegated Fleet
Privilege escalation in Elastic Kibana's Agent Builder component (versions 9.4.0-9.4.3) allows authenticated low-privile
A deserialization issue in Kibana can lead to arbitrary code execution when Kibana attempts to parse a YAML document con
Kibana version 8.7.0 contains an arbitrary code execution flaw. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.8), this vulnerability is re
EUVD-2026-58269
GHSA-55cc-rgfq-623v
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
VulDB
Exploit-DB