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 access and modify other tenants' portal data due to improper neutralization of argument delimiters.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "9.9",
  "pubDate": "2026-11-07T05:18:58.410Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-11-07T05:18:58.410Z",
  "executiveSummary": "IBM API Connect versions 10.0.8.0 through 10.0.8.12 and 12.1.0.0 through 12.1.1.2 are susceptible to a critical tenant isolation vulnerability. This flaw arises from improper neutralization of argument delimiters, enabling a remote authenticated attacker to access and manipulate data belonging to other tenants within the portal environment.\nThe vulnerability represents a significant breach of multi-tenancy security boundaries. An authenticated attacker, despite having legitimate access to their own tenant, can leverage this defect to transcend architectural silos and perform unauthorized read and write operations on disparate tenant datasets.\nThe risk implication is severe, as it facilitates unauthorized information disclosure and potential data integrity compromise across the platform. Successful exploitation requires the attacker to hold valid authentication credentials within the system; however, no administrative privileges are required to initiate the attack. This vulnerability necessitates immediate attention to prevent unauthorized cross-tenant data access within enterprise API management infrastructures.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is improper neutralization of argument delimiters during the processing of requests within the IBM API Connect portal component. In systems relying on multi-tenancy, strict logical separation of data must be enforced at the application layer to ensure that user sessions are restricted to their defined tenant scope. When argument delimiters are not correctly sanitized or validated, an attacker can inject manipulation sequences that alter the interpretation of the backend query or the command structure responsible for resource scoping.\nThe attack flow initiates when an authenticated user crafts a malicious request targeted at the portal interface. By manipulating parameters that include improperly handled delimiters, the attacker can effectively 'break out' of the intended tenant context. Because the application fails to neutralize these delimiters, the underlying logic incorrectly interprets the manipulated request as being authorized to interact with resources outside the attacker's assigned scope. This effectively bypasses the multi-tenancy enforcement mechanisms, allowing the attacker to traverse and modify data repositories associated with other tenants hosted on the same instance.\nExploitation is facilitated through the portal service, which acts as the primary interface for managing API developer portal data. Since the vulnerability involves the improper handling of input arguments, it is highly likely that the affected functionality lies within the request parsing logic or the database abstraction layer that maps incoming portal requests to specific tenant-identified records. The scope of impact is broad, encompassing any data stored within the portal that is reachable through the affected request handlers.\nThe requirement for authentication means the attacker must already be an authorized user within the environment; however, this is a common scenario in SaaS or shared-platform environments where customers have legitimate, limited access to their own portals. Post-exploitation, the attacker gains the ability to manipulate arbitrary tenant data, which could lead to service disruption, theft of sensitive configuration information, or the unauthorized modification of API documentation and access keys that could influence upstream traffic or application security posture across multiple customer organizations."
}