PatchSiren

PatchSiren cyber security CVE debrief

CVE-2021-39226 Grafana Labs CVE debrief

CVE-2021-39226 is a Grafana authentication bypass vulnerability that CISA added to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-08-25, with remediation due by 2022-09-15. Grafana’s vendor advisory notes a critical security fix was released for Grafana 7.5.11 and 8.1.6 on 2021-10-05. Because this issue is listed as known exploited, organizations running Grafana should treat patching and version verification as urgent.

Vendor
Grafana Labs
Product
Grafana
CVSS
Unknown
CISA KEV
Listed
Original CVE published
2022-08-25
Original CVE updated
2022-08-25
Advisory published
2022-08-25
Advisory updated
2022-08-25

Who should care

Security teams, platform owners, and administrators responsible for Grafana deployments, especially any internet-facing or externally reachable instances.

Technical summary

The available official sources identify the issue as an authentication bypass in Grafana. CISA classifies the vulnerability as known exploited, which indicates active risk and a need to apply vendor guidance promptly. The supplied sources do not provide deeper exploitation mechanics, so defensive action should focus on upgrading to the vendor-fixed versions referenced in the official Grafana advisory and confirming affected instances are remediated.

Defensive priority

High. CISA KEV inclusion means this vulnerability should be prioritized for immediate remediation according to vendor instructions.

Recommended defensive actions

  • Identify all Grafana instances in your environment, including self-hosted, managed, and externally exposed deployments.
  • Verify the installed Grafana version against the vendor advisory for the fixed releases noted in the official announcement.
  • Apply the vendor-recommended updates as soon as possible.
  • If patching must be delayed, reduce exposure by limiting network access to Grafana and monitoring for suspicious authentication activity.
  • Confirm remediation by rechecking versions and validating that the affected instances are no longer running vulnerable builds.

Evidence notes

CISA’s KEV record names the issue “Grafana Authentication Bypass Vulnerability,” marks it as known exploited, and sets a remediation due date of 2022-09-15. The KEV notes link to Grafana’s official blog post announcing Grafana 7.5.11 and 8.1.6 with a critical security fix, and to the NVD record for CVE-2021-39226. The supplied corpus does not include CVSS metrics.

Official resources

CISA added CVE-2021-39226 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-08-25. Grafana’s official security blog post referenced in the KEV notes was published on 2021-10-05.