Description

Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') (CWE-22) in Kibana can lead to the unauthorized deletion of privileged resources via Path Traversal (CAPEC-126). A low-privileged user holding tag creation privileges could cause a subsequent administrative action in the tag management interface to act on an unintended target, resulting in the deletion of privileged resources including administrative accounts and other organizational assets. Exploitation requires an administrator to interact with the affected interface.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-01T20:17:23.387Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-01T20:17:23.387Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is categorized as Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (CWE-22), commonly known as Path Traversal.\nThe flaw exists within the Kibana tag management interface, allowing a low-privileged user to influence administrative operations.\nBy manipulating path parameters, an attacker with tag creation privileges can cause the application to perform unauthorized deletions of critical system resources.\nThe impact is severe, potentially leading to the destruction of administrative accounts and sensitive organizational assets.\nExploitation requires a specific interaction pattern where an administrator must perform a subsequent action within the compromised tag management interface, making this a secondary-victim exploit.\nThe vulnerability highlights a failure in input sanitization when processing file path references associated with resource tagging, resulting in an authorization bypass and arbitrary resource manipulation.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is the insufficient validation and sanitization of user-supplied input used in file path construction within the Kibana tag management subsystem. By failing to restrict the scope of path resolution, the application becomes susceptible to directory traversal sequences (e.g., ../), allowing the application logic to reference unauthorized file system objects.\nThe attack flow initiates when a low-privileged user, who possesses the capability to create tags, crafts a malicious tag name or metadata attribute containing directory traversal characters. Because the application logic does not strictly validate these inputs against a whitelist of permissible directory structures, the traversal sequence is persisted within the system's internal state or database associated with the tag.\nThe exploitation phase is completed when a high-privileged administrator interacts with the tag management interface. When the administrator triggers a management function, such as deleting or modifying an existing tag, the application reads the previously injected, malicious path from the tag's metadata. The backend logic then resolves this path, which now points to a sensitive system file or internal resource outside of the intended directory. Consequently, the deletion operation, which carries the administrative context of the user performing the action, is executed against the target identified by the traversal payload.\nThis behavior represents an elevation of privilege via administrative action, as the attacker effectively uses the administrator's session context to perform unintended write/delete operations on protected organizational assets. The technical failure lies in the application's trust in the integrity of stored tag metadata when resolving file paths for administrative operations.\nThe primary risk is the loss of data integrity and availability, specifically concerning administrative accounts and system configurations. The vulnerability resides in the interface responsible for tag lifecycle management. Exploitation is contingent upon the successful injection of path-altering sequences and the subsequent invocation of the vulnerable function by an administrative user."
}