Description

In Splunk AI Toolkit versions below 6.0.1, a user who does not hold the "admin" or "power" Splunk roles could delete the experiment history of another user without permission through the Representational State Transfer (REST) API. The vulnerability is possible because Splunk AI Toolkit deletes experiment history before it verifies that the user can delete the associated experiment. For more information see Experiment Assistants (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-cloud-platform/apply-machine-learning/use-ai-toolkit/5.6.4/experiment-assistants) in the Splunk documentation.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-19T22:17:26.400Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-19T22:17:26.400Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An insecure authorization vulnerability exists in the Splunk AI Toolkit affecting versions below 6.0.1. The flaw allows an unauthorized user lacking 'admin' or 'power' Splunk roles to delete the experiment history of other users via the Representational State Transfer (REST) API.\nThe vulnerability directly impacts data integrity within the affected systems by permitting unauthorized deletion of sensitive machine learning experiment records. The risk implications include potential data sabotage, loss of audit trails, and improper access control enforcement across multi-tenant or shared Splunk environments.\nTo exploit this vulnerability, an attacker requires network access to the Splunk instance and the ability to interact with the Representational State Transfer (REST) API endpoint. No elevated privileges such as 'admin' or 'power' roles are necessary, as the application fails to enforce proper permission checks prior to executing the deletion operation.\nExploitation is driven by flawed logical sequencing within the backend handling of experiment history deletions. Organizations utilizing the Splunk AI Toolkit must upgrade to version 6.0.1 or higher to remediate the authorization check bypass.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides within the Representational State Transfer (REST) API component of the Splunk AI Toolkit in versions prior to 6.0.1. The root cause of the security defect is an improper authorization check sequence, specifically an instance of broken object-level authorization (BOLA) or missing function-level access control.\nDuring the processing of an experiment history deletion request via the Representational State Transfer (REST) API, the application executes the deletion logic against the target data store before validating whether the requesting user possesses the necessary permissions to delete the associated experiment. Because the validation check is deferred or omitted entirely in the vulnerable execution path, the backend processes the deletion request regardless of the user's role.\nAn attacker initiates exploitation by crafting a Representational State Transfer (REST) API request targeting the experiment history resource of another user. Operating without 'admin' or 'power' Splunk roles, the attacker transmits this request to the vulnerable endpoint over the network. Upon receipt, the application prematurely triggers the deletion of the specified experiment history. Subsequent validation routines, if any, fail to prevent the action since the primary resource has already been expunged.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: 1) The attacker identifies or enumerates target experiment history identifiers via the Representational State Transfer (REST) API. 2) The attacker issues an unauthorized HTTP deletion request for another user's experiment history. 3) The vulnerable component processes the request and deletes the experiment history records prior to verifying user authorization against the parent experiment. 4) The operation completes successfully, resulting in unauthorized data destruction.\nThe affected component handles experiment assistants and experiment histories as documented in the Splunk documentation. The vulnerability impacts network-exposed Splunk instances running Splunk AI Toolkit versions below 6.0.1. Authentication may be required depending on the overarching Splunk instance configuration, but standard user authentication is sufficient as privilege level enforcement fails to restrict the action to 'admin' or 'power' roles."
}