CVE-2025-25010 in Kibana
Summary
by MITRE • 08/28/2025
Incorrect authorization in Kibana can lead to privilege escalation via the built-in reporting_user role which incorrectly has the ability to access all Kibana Spaces.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/06/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-25010 represents a critical authorization flaw within the Kibana security framework that directly enables privilege escalation attacks. This issue affects the built-in reporting_user role which has been improperly configured to grant excessive access privileges. The flaw stems from an incorrect implementation of access controls that allows users assigned to the reporting_user role to bypass normal space-level authorization boundaries and gain access to all Kibana Spaces within the environment. This misconfiguration creates a significant security gap that undermines the intended multi-tenancy and isolation capabilities of Kibana's access control system.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper assignment of permissions within Kibana's role-based access control mechanism. Specifically, the reporting_user role has been incorrectly granted global access permissions that should be restricted to specific spaces or contexts. This flaw operates at the intersection of CWE-284, which addresses improper access control, and CWE-732, which covers incorrect permission assignment. The vulnerability manifests when an attacker with access to the reporting_user role attempts to navigate the Kibana interface and discovers they can access resources and data belonging to other spaces within the same Kibana instance. This behavior violates fundamental security principles of least privilege and separation of duties that are essential for maintaining data isolation in multi-tenant environments.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe and multifaceted, particularly in environments where Kibana serves as a central analytics platform for multiple teams or departments. An attacker exploiting this vulnerability can potentially access sensitive data from other spaces, including confidential logs, metrics, and dashboards that should be restricted to specific user groups or teams. This unauthorized access can lead to data exfiltration, compliance violations, and the exposure of critical business intelligence. The vulnerability also enables attackers to perform reconnaissance activities across multiple spaces, potentially identifying additional targets for further exploitation. In large enterprise environments where Kibana is used for security monitoring and incident response, this flaw could allow attackers to access forensic data, security alerts, and threat intelligence from other organizational units, severely compromising the overall security posture.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations to address this vulnerability by reviewing and correcting the permission assignments for the reporting_user role. The primary remediation involves removing global access capabilities from the reporting_user role and ensuring that it only has access to the specific spaces where reporting activities are legitimately required. This should be accomplished through careful configuration of role permissions within Kibana's access control settings. Additionally, organizations should implement comprehensive monitoring of access patterns for the reporting_user role to detect any anomalous behavior that might indicate exploitation attempts. Security teams should also conduct thorough audits of all built-in roles to identify similar permission misconfigurations that could create additional attack vectors. The remediation process should align with ATT&CK framework tactic TA0004 (Privilege Escalation) and technique T1078 (Valid Accounts) as attackers may leverage this vulnerability to escalate their privileges and maintain persistent access to sensitive environments. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be implemented to ensure that similar authorization flaws do not exist in other components of the Kibana ecosystem or related security tooling.