Description

IBM API Connect 10.0.8.0 through 10.0.8.12 and 12.1.0.0 through 12.1.1.2 could allow a remote authenticated attacker to perform unauthorized operations in other tenants' environments due to improper validation of client-supplied information. Tenant context is not sufficiently verified, which could allow actions on resources belonging to other tenants.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.1",
  "pubDate": "2026-11-07T05:18:34.737Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-11-07T05:18:34.737Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is an improper authorization flaw affecting IBM API Connect, specifically targeting multi-tenant isolation mechanisms.\nThe vulnerability allows a remote authenticated attacker to perform unauthorized operations within the environments of other tenants by manipulating client-supplied information.\nThe root cause lies in the insufficient verification of tenant context, which permits cross-tenant resource manipulation.\nAffected products include IBM API Connect versions 10.0.8.0 through 10.0.8.12 and 12.1.0.0 through 12.1.1.2.\nThis flaw presents a significant security risk, as it undermines the logical segmentation of data and services in a shared cloud-hosted or multi-tenant deployment.\nExploitation requires the attacker to possess valid authentication within the system, after which they can bypass tenant boundaries to execute unauthorized actions against resources they are not permitted to access.\nThe impact includes potential unauthorized data access, modification, or disruption of services belonging to other organizations within the same IBM API Connect deployment.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from a failure in the API Connect architectural layer responsible for enforcing multi-tenant isolation. The system performs improper validation of client-supplied information that defines or signifies the tenant context during request processing.\nIn a secure multi-tenant architecture, the identity and tenant context of an authenticated request must be cryptographically bound or strictly derived from secure session state or tokens. In this instance, the validation logic fails to adequately ensure that the provided context matches the actual scope authorized for the authenticated user.\nThe attack flow begins with an authenticated attacker interacting with the API Connect management or gateway plane. By intercepting or crafting requests, the attacker injects or modifies parameters—such as tenant identifiers or resource paths—that the application fails to validate against the user's established session permissions.\nBecause the system trusts the client-supplied information without sufficient server-side verification, the authorization checks are bypassed. The application processes the request as if it originated from a context authorized to perform the action on the target tenant's resources.\nThe vulnerable component involves the internal routing and authorization modules responsible for multi-tenant mapping. By manipulating the request metadata, an attacker can influence the service to perform operations such as CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) actions on objects belonging to a different tenant ID.\nThis is an authenticated vulnerability; the attacker must have a valid account on the IBM API Connect instance to reach the vulnerable API endpoints. However, no administrative privileges in the target tenant are required. The network exposure is broad, as this affects the API interface reachable by authorized users.\nPost-exploitation, the attacker achieves cross-tenant unauthorized access. This can lead to the exfiltration of sensitive configuration data, modification of API definitions, exposure of client secrets, or the disruption of third-party API availability. The lack of stringent tenant context verification effectively nullifies the isolation intended to separate independent organizations sharing the same infrastructure."
}