CVE-2026-13720 in OSS
Summary
by MITRE • 09/30/2026
An Editor can set file-provisioning metadata (the grafana.app/managedBy, grafana.app/managerId and grafana.app/sourcePath annotations) when creating a dashboard through the dashboard API, because these fields were stored without an authorization check. The dashboard then appears file-provisioned, and administrators can no longer update or delete it through Grafana. The impact is limited to the same organization and no data is exposed.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/30/2026
The vulnerability described involves a critical authorization bypass within the Grafana application's dashboard provisioning mechanism, specifically affecting users with Editor privileges. In standard operational workflows, file-provisioned dashboards are managed by external systems or administrators through specific metadata annotations such as grafana.app/managedBy, grafana.app/managerId, and grafana.app/sourcePath. These annotations signal to the Grafana backend that a dashboard is externally provisioned via files rather than created directly within the UI database. Under normal security controls, only users with Administrator privileges or those explicitly authorized by the provisioning system should be able to set these metadata fields. However, due to insufficient access control checks in the API endpoint responsible for creating dashboards, an Editor can inject these annotations arbitrarily during dashboard creation. This flaw allows a lower-privileged user to masquerade as an external provisioning source, effectively claiming ownership of the resource at a system level that bypasses standard UI-based permission models.
The technical root cause lies in the lack of validation on the grafana.app/managedBy and related annotation fields when processing POST requests for dashboard creation. The application logic accepts these metadata inputs from any authenticated user with write access to dashboards, without verifying if the requesting entity has the requisite administrative rights or provisioning service identity. This represents a classic case of broken object level authorization where the system fails to enforce proper restrictions on resource attributes that dictate management lifecycle. By setting grafana.app/managedBy to a non-empty value, typically pointing to a file path or provisioner ID, the dashboard is flagged as externally managed. Consequently, the Grafana interface and API restrict subsequent modifications by standard administrators who rely on these flags to determine editability. This creates a denial of service condition for administrative functions within that specific organization context, as admins are prevented from updating or deleting dashboards they believe they control but which have been hijacked via metadata injection.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability enables a persistent disruption of dashboard management capabilities without requiring data exfiltration or system compromise. The attacker does not need to expose sensitive information; rather, the attack vector targets availability and administrative integrity within the Grafana organization scope. Once a dashboard is marked as file-provisioned through this exploit, it becomes immutable via standard UI interactions for administrators who do not have direct access to modify the underlying provisioning configuration files on disk. This can hinder incident response efforts if critical monitoring dashboards are locked out of admin control during an active security event or operational crisis. The impact is confined to the organization in which the dashboard resides, meaning cross-organization data leakage does not occur, but the loss of administrative agility remains a significant risk for teams relying on dynamic dashboard management.
This vulnerability aligns with CWE-269, Improper Privilege Management, as it allows an actor to elevate their effective control over resources beyond their assigned role by manipulating metadata fields that dictate resource ownership and mutability. In terms of the MITRE ATT&CK framework, this behavior corresponds to T1078, Valid Accounts, specifically within the context of abusing legitimate user permissions to disrupt administrative workflows, or potentially T1496, Resource Hijacking, if viewed as a denial-of-service tactic against admin capabilities. To mitigate this issue, Grafana administrators should ensure they are running patched versions that enforce strict authorization checks on provisioning-related annotations during dashboard creation and update operations. Additionally, organizations can implement network-level controls to restrict access to the dashboard API endpoints or apply role-based access control policies that explicitly deny Editors from setting system-managed metadata fields until proper validation logic is enforced by the application backend.