Grafana is a powerful, widely used open-source visualization and analytical platform that allows data-driven decisions by providing rich and interactive dashboards. Unfortunately, a security vulnerability - CVE-2024-8118 - has been identified in Grafana. In this detailed article, we will explain the nature of this vulnerability, provide a code snippet, link to original references, and discuss potential exploit details. The language will be kept simple and exclusive to ensure the understanding of a broad range of readers.

Core Issue - Wrong Permission

The core issue of this vulnerability, CVE-2024-8118, lies in the wrong permission being applied to the Alert Rule Write API Endpoint. Specifically, users who have permission to write external alert instances also have permission to write Alert Rules, which can be exploited maliciously.

Here's a brief code snippet to illustrate the wrong permission being applied

// Vulnerable Code in Grafana - Wrong Permission Applied on Alert Rule Write API Endpoint
alertPluginRouteMethod(route) {
  ...
  // Check if the user has permission to write external alert instances
  this.checkExternalAlertInstanceWritePermission();

  // The user has permission so apply permission to write alert rules
  this.checkAlertRuleWritePermission();
  ...
}

As seen in the code snippet above, the permission to write external alert instances (checkExternalAlertInstanceWritePermission()) is checked, but then the permission to write Alert Rules (checkAlertRuleWritePermission()) is granted. This should not be the case, as these two permissions should be managed independently to avoid unauthorized modifications to Alert Rules.

1. Grafana official documentation: https://grafana.com/docs
2. Grafana security advisory (related to CVE-2024-8118): https://grafana.com/security/cve-2024-8118

Exploit Details

An attacker with the permission to write external alert instances can exploit this vulnerability (CVE-2024-8118) to alter Alert Rules without proper authorization. This opens the door to various malicious activities, such as:

Modifying existing Alert Rules to prevent timely detection of critical events.

2. Creating new, false Alert Rules to generate fake events or false alarms leading to wasted time, resources, and confusion.
3. Gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information related to the user's environment or infrastructure.

Mitigation

Until a patch is released that resolves this security vulnerability, Grafana users should take the following steps to minimize the risk of exploitation:

1. Review user permissions to ensure that only necessary users have permission to write external alert instances.
2. Implement strong access controls and monitoring for Alert Rule Write API Endpoint to detect unauthorized modifications.

Inspect your Alert Rules regularly for unexpected changes and tampering.

4. Keep an eye on Grafana's official website for updates and security patches (https://grafana.com).

Conclusion

In this post, we provided an in-depth explanation of the Grafana security vulnerability CVE-2024-8118, focusing on the wrong permission being applied to Alert Rule Write API Endpoints. We also examined the potential risks and exploits possible by malicious actors due to this vulnerability and recommended preventative measures for users to implement. It is crucial for Grafana users to stay vigilant in maintaining security in their systems until a permanent patch is available for this issue.

Timeline

Published on: 09/26/2024 19:15:07 UTC
Last modified on: 09/30/2024 12:46:20 UTC