CVE-2026-21721 Grafana CVE debrief

Who should care

Grafana users and administrators should be aware of this vulnerability, especially those with multi-dashboard management permissions. Security teams monitoring Grafana deployments should prioritize patching or mitigating this issue to prevent potential privilege escalation attacks within their organizations.

Technical summary

The CVE-2026-21721 vulnerability exists in Grafana's dashboard permissions API. The API fails to validate the target dashboard scope properly, only checking if the user has the dashboards.permissions:* action. This allows users with permission management rights on one dashboard to escalate their privileges and read or modify permissions on other dashboards. The vulnerability is rated HIGH with a CVSS score of 8.1. Affected versions include Grafana 10.2.0 to 11.6.9, 12.0.0 to 12.0.8, 12.1.0 to 12.1.5, and 12.2.0 to 12.2.3. Patched versions include 11.6.9, 12.0.8, 12.1.5, and 12.2.3, as well as 12.3.0 and later.

Defensive priority

This HIGH-severity vulnerability requires immediate attention from Grafana administrators. Users with dashboard permission management rights could potentially exploit this issue to escalate privileges and gain unauthorized access to sensitive information across different dashboards.

Recommended defensive actions

• Apply patches or updates provided by Grafana to address CVE-2026-21721.
• Review and restrict dashboard permission management rights to only necessary personnel.
• Monitor dashboard access and permission changes for suspicious activity.
• Implement additional logging and auditing for dashboard modifications.
• Consider temporarily restricting access to the dashboard permissions API until patched.

Evidence notes

The CVE-2026-21721 vulnerability was published on January 27, 2026, and last modified on June 30, 2026. It was tracked by multiple sources including NVD, Grafana, and Red Hat. The vulnerability affects various versions of Grafana, with patches available for versions 11.6.9, 12.0.8, 12.1.5, 12.2.3, and 12.3.0 or later.

Official resources