Description

Missing Authorization (CWE-862) in Kibana can lead to information disclosure via Privilege Abuse (CAPEC-122). An authorization control was not applied to an internal Kibana APM integration function, allowing any authenticated Kibana user to read APM server credentials that should be restricted to users holding APM or Fleet administrative privileges.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-01T20:17:24.160Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-01T20:17:24.160Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability involves a Missing Authorization flaw (CWE-862) within the Kibana APM integration component, categorized under Privilege Abuse (CAPEC-122).\nThe vulnerability allows any authenticated user within the Kibana instance to access sensitive APM server credentials, effectively bypassing intended role-based access control (RBAC) mechanisms.\nThe affected system is Kibana, specifically the APM integration subsystem, which manages sensitive administrative secrets.\nThe risk implication is significant, as unauthorized exposure of APM credentials permits malicious actors to potentially intercept, manipulate, or gain unauthorized visibility into application performance monitoring telemetry, potentially leading to further compromise of integrated infrastructure.\nExploitation requires the attacker to be an authenticated user of the Kibana instance, meaning no administrative privileges are required to initiate the attack.\nBy leveraging this flaw, a low-privileged user can escalate their access to sensitive administrative data that should be strictly gated behind APM or Fleet administrative roles.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is the absence of an authorization check within an internal Kibana APM integration function designed to retrieve server-side credentials.\nIn a secure configuration, access to APM integration secrets should be restricted to users possessing specific privileges, such as Fleet administrative or APM-specific administrative roles. However, the internal function responsible for serving these credentials failed to validate the caller's session permissions against the required security policy.\nThe attack flow begins when an authenticated user performs a request to the vulnerable internal endpoint responsible for retrieving APM server credentials. Because the application logic relies on implicit trust of the authenticated session rather than an explicit authorization check, the request is processed successfully regardless of the user's assigned role.\nThe vulnerable component is identified as an internal API function within the Kibana APM integration plugin. The lack of middleware or access control enforcement allows the retrieval of sensitive configuration data—specifically the credentials used for APM server communication—which are then returned in the HTTP response body to the caller.\nExploitation occurs when an attacker triggers the undocumented or internal API endpoint associated with the APM integration. Since the system treats the request as a legitimate internal query, it proceeds to query the underlying configuration store or secret management layer and transmits the sensitive information back to the requester.\nThe impact of this exploit is classified as information disclosure. By obtaining APM server credentials, a malicious actor can impersonate the APM integration service, potentially exposing sensitive application telemetry or facilitating lateral movement if those credentials grant broader access to other integrated components or external monitoring infrastructure.\nThis vulnerability highlights a failure in secure development practices where internal functions were exposed without applying the same robust access control policies utilized by the public-facing Kibana API surface. As no special privilege escalation beyond initial authentication is required, the attack surface remains broad for any user with valid access to the Kibana dashboard environment."
}