GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.8) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web. A fix is available for github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Grafana Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w.
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
GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w 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 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web🐹github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/webReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Today we are releasing Grafana 8.3.5 and 7.5.15. This patch release includes MEDIUM severity security fix for Cross Site Request Forgery for Grafana.
Release v.8.3.5, only containing security fixes:
Release v.7.5.15, only containing security fixes:
CSRF (CVE-2022-21703)
Summary
On Jan. 18, security researchers jub0bs and abrahack contacted Grafana to disclose a CSRF vulnerability which allows anonymous attackers to elevate their privileges by mounting cross-origin attacks against authenticated high-privilege Grafana users (for example, Editors or Admins).
We believe that this vulnerability is rated at CVSS 6.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N).
Impact
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability for privilege escalation by tricking an authenticated user into inviting the attacker as a new user with high privileges.
Affected versions with MEDIUM severity
All Grafana >=3.0-beta1 versions are affected by this vulnerability.
Solutions and mitigations
All installations after Grafana v3.0-beta1 should be upgraded as soon as possible.
Note that if you are running Grafana behind any reverse proxy, you need to make sure that you are passing the original Host and Origin headers from the client request to Grafana.
In the case of Apache Server, you need to add ProxyPreserveHost on in your proxy configuration. In case of NGINX, you can need to add proxy_set_header Host $http_host; in your configuration.
Appropriate patches have been applied to Grafana Cloud and as always, we closely coordinated with all cloud providers licensed to offer Grafana Pro. They have received early notification under embargo and confirmed that their offerings are secure at the time of this announcement. This is applicable to Amazon Managed Grafana.
Timeline and postmortem
Here is a detailed timeline starting from when we originally learned of the issue. All times in UTC.
- 2022-01-18 03:00 Issue submitted by external researchers
- 2022-01-18 17:25 Vulnerability confirmed reproducible
- 2022-01-19 07:40 CVSS score confirmed 6.8 at maximum and MEDIUM impact
- 2022-01-19 07:40 Begin mitigation for Grafana Cloud
- 2022-01-19 17:00 CVE requested
- 2022-01-19 19:50 GitHub issues CVE-2022-21703
- 2022-01-21 10:50 PR with fix opened
- 2022-01-21 14:13 Private release planned for 2022-01-25, and public release planned for 2022-02-01.
- 2022-01-25 12:00 Private release
- 2022-02-01 12:00 During the public release process, we realized that private 7.x release was incomplete. Abort public release, send second private release to customers using 7.x
- 2022-02-08 12:00 Public release
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank jub0bs and abrahack for responsibly disclosing the vulnerability.
Reporting security issues
If you think you have found a security vulnerability, please send a report to [email protected]. This address can be used for all of Grafana Labs' open source and commercial products (including, but not limited to Grafana, Grafana Cloud, Grafana Enterprise, and grafana.com). We can accept only vulnerability reports at this address. We would prefer that you encrypt your message to us by using our PGP key. The key fingerprint is
F988 7BEA 027A 049F AE8E 5CAA D125 8932 BE24 C5CA
The key is available from keyserver.ubuntu.com.
Security announcements
We maintain a security category on our blog, where we will always post a summary, remediation, and mitigation details for any patch containing security fixes.
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Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web | ≥ 3.0-beta1&&< 7.5.15 | 7.5.15go get github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web@v7.5.15 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.3.5 | 8.3.5go get github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web@v8.3.5 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/grafana/grafana/pkg/web to 7.5.15 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | grafana-0:7.5.15-3.el8 | RHSA-2022:7519 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | grafana-0:7.5.15-3.el9 | RHSA-2022:8057 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-cmf4-h3xc-jw8w across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.