Grafana security releases: New versions with moderate severity security fixes for CVE-2022-35957 and CVE-2022-36062

Today we are releasing Grafana 9.1.6. Alongside other bug fixes, this patch release includes moderate severity security fixes for CVE-2022-35957 and CVE-2022-36062 that provide protection against privilege escalation vulnerabilities related to Grafana Auth Proxy and role-based access control (RBAC).

We are also releasing security patches for Grafana 9.0.9 and Grafana 8.5.13 to fix these issues.

Release 9.1.6, latest patch, also containing security fix:

• Download Grafana 9.1.6
• Release notes

Release 9.0.9, only containing security fix:

• Download Grafana 9.0.9

Release 8.5.13, only containing security fix:

• Download Grafana 8.5.13

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 and Azure Managed Grafana as a service offering.

RBAC privilege escalation (CVE-2022-36062)

Summary

On Aug. 29, we received a bug report for Grafana role-based access control (RBAC) and confirmed a vulnerability in Grafana. This vulnerability impacts folders/dashboards with Admin-only permissions and where RBAC was ever enabled at least once.

When RBAC is enabled, Grafana runs migrations, which translate legacy access control permissions into RBAC permissions. The migrations contain a bug, which grants additional access to folders/dashboards that only had Admin role grant, resulting in a privilege escalation where Editors can edit and Viewers can view the folder/dashboard that they should not have access to.

The CVSS score for this vulnerability is 6.4 Moderate (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L).

Impacted versions

All Grafana installations where the RBAC feature was enabled at least once and there are folders/dashboards with only Admin role grant.

Solutions and mitigations

To fully address CVE-2022-36062, please upgrade your Grafana instances. This is only required if you have ever enabled RBAC and have dashboards/folders where Admin is the only permission.

If you can’t upgrade, when the impacted folder/dashboard is known, the additional permissions can be removed manually as a workaround.

Appropriate patches have been applied to Grafana Cloud.

Timeline

Here is a timeline starting from when we originally learned of the issue.

• 2022-08-27: External report received about a bug in Grafana role-based access control.
• 2022-08-30: The bug is confirmed as a vulnerability.
• 2022-08-31: Mitigation is applied to Grafana Cloud.
• 2022-08-31: Release timeline determined: 2022-09-06 for private customer release, 2022-09-20 for public release.
• 2022-09-06: Private release.
• 2022-09-20: Public release.

Auth proxy privilege escalation (CVE-2022-35957)

Summary

On Aug. 9, an internal security review identified a vulnerability in Grafana that allows an escalation from Admin privileges to Server Admin when Auth proxy authentication is used.

Auth proxy includes the ability to authenticate a user by only providing the username (or email) in a X-WEBAUTH-USER HTTP header. The trust assumption is that a front proxy will take care of authentication and that a Grafana server is publicly reachable only with this front proxy.

Data source proxy breaks this assumption:

• It is possible to configure a fake data source pointing to a localhost Grafana install with a X-WEBAUTH-USER HTTP header containing Admin username.
• This fake data source can be called publicly via this proxying feature.

The CVSS score for this vulnerability is 6.6 Moderate (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).

Impacted versions

All Grafana installations where the Auth Proxy is used.

Solutions and mitigations

To fully address CVE-2022-35957, please upgrade your Grafana instances. This is only required if you are using auth proxy. If you can’t upgrade, as an alternative, you can deactivate the auth proxy.

Appropriate patches have been applied to Grafana Cloud.

Timeline

Here is a timeline starting from when we originally learned of the issue.

• 2022-08-09: Vulnerability is reported as a result of an Internal security audit.
• 2022-08-09: Release timeline determined: 2022-09-06 for private customer release, 2022-09-20 for public release.
• 2022-08-09: Confirmed that Grafana Cloud is not impacted.
• 2022-09-06: Private release.
• 2022-09-20: Public release.

Reporting security issues

If you think you have found a security vulnerability, please send a report to security@grafana.com. 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

We maintain a security category on our blog, where we will always post a summary, remediation, and mitigation details for any patch containing security fixes.

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