CVE-2026-72898 — Metabase
CRITICALCVE-2026-72898 is a critical-severity (CVSS 10) SQL Injection vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-08-11) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Metabase allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to inject arbitrary SQL via the '/reset_password' database endpoint and gain administrator access to the connected Metabase instance.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-08-11. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-08-14.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2026-72898.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-72898 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Description
Metabase allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to inject arbitrary SQL via the '/reset_password' database endpoint and gain administrator access to the connected Metabase instance.
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`). Because exploitation targets the running service rather than your application code, O3 also flags the exploit behaviour from runtime telemetry and egress traffic.
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-72898 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Reduce reachability while you patch: restrict network access to the service to trusted sources, disable or gate the affected component where your deployment allows it, and add a WAF/IPS signature if one exists for CVE-2026-72898. O3's runtime protection blocks the sql injection flaw at execution, which holds the line on hosts you cannot patch immediately.
How O3 protects you
O3 detects and blocks CVE-2026-72898 exploitation at runtime with eBPF exploit-chain detection, plus L7 egress monitoring that catches a post-exploitation callback and cuts the attacker's outbound channel.
Tailored to CVE-2026-72898. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
How to detect CVE-2026-72898
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2026-72898 -u https://target- Template
- Metabase - Unauthenticated SQL Injection
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Remote unauthenticated attackers can execute arbitrary SQL and gain administrator access to the Metabase instance.
- Remediation
- Update to the latest version of Metabase.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (0x_Akoko, pdteam), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-72898 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-72898 across dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.