CVE-2025-1088: Grafana DoS Vulnerability via Input Validation

CVE-2025-1088 Overview

CVE-2025-1088 is an Improper Input Validation vulnerability in Grafana that allows users with dashboard editing privileges to cause Chromium-based browsers to become unresponsive. The vulnerability is triggered when an excessively long dashboard title or panel name is submitted, causing a client-side denial of service condition affecting users viewing the malicious dashboard.

Critical Impact

Authenticated users with dashboard editing privileges can render Grafana dashboards inaccessible to other users by creating dashboard titles or panel names of excessive length, causing Chromium browsers to hang.

Affected Products

• Grafana versions before 11.6.2

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-06-18 - CVE-2025-1088 published to NVD
• 2025-06-18 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-1088

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability stems from improper input validation (CWE-20) in Grafana's handling of dashboard titles and panel names. When a user with sufficient privileges creates a dashboard with an excessively long title or panel name, the Grafana frontend fails to properly validate or truncate the input before rendering it in Chromium-based browsers.

The lack of input length restrictions allows for resource exhaustion on the client side. When a browser attempts to render the oversized text content, it consumes excessive memory and CPU resources during the DOM manipulation and rendering process, ultimately causing the browser tab or entire browser instance to become unresponsive.

This is a client-side denial of service vulnerability that requires authenticated access with dashboard creation or editing privileges. While the severity is classified as low due to the limited impact scope and authentication requirements, it can disrupt monitoring workflows for teams relying on Grafana dashboards.

Root Cause

The root cause is insufficient input validation on the Grafana server side for dashboard title and panel name fields. The application does not enforce appropriate character length limits on these user-controlled input fields before storing them in the database and subsequently rendering them in the web interface.

Attack Vector

The attack vector is network-based and requires the attacker to have authenticated access with privileges to create or modify dashboards. The exploitation flow involves:

1. Attacker authenticates to Grafana with dashboard editing privileges
2. Attacker creates or modifies a dashboard with an extremely long title or panel name
3. The malicious dashboard is saved to the Grafana backend
4. When any user (including the attacker) opens the dashboard in a Chromium-based browser, the browser becomes unresponsive while attempting to render the oversized text content

The vulnerability does not require user interaction beyond normal dashboard viewing and affects confidentiality or integrity minimally, but can cause availability issues for affected browser sessions.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-1088

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusually long dashboard titles or panel names in Grafana database (potentially thousands of characters)
• User reports of browser freezing or becoming unresponsive when accessing specific dashboards
• Elevated memory usage in Chromium-based browsers when accessing Grafana

Detection Strategies

• Monitor Grafana audit logs for dashboard creation or modification events with anomalously large payload sizes
• Implement server-side validation rules to flag or block dashboard configurations with excessively long text fields
• Review existing dashboards for titles or panel names exceeding reasonable length thresholds

Monitoring Recommendations

• Configure alerts for Grafana API requests with unusually large request body sizes
• Monitor client-side performance metrics for Grafana users to identify potential DoS incidents
• Implement regular automated scans of dashboard configurations for anomalous field lengths

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-1088

Immediate Actions Required

• Upgrade Grafana to version 11.6.2 or higher immediately
• Audit existing dashboards for excessively long titles or panel names and remediate any findings
• Review user privileges and limit dashboard creation/editing rights to trusted users as a defense-in-depth measure

Patch Information

Grafana has addressed this vulnerability in version 11.6.2 and higher. The fix implements proper input validation to enforce appropriate length limits on dashboard titles and panel names, preventing the client-side resource exhaustion condition.

For detailed patch information, refer to the Grafana Security Advisory for CVE-2025-1088.

Workarounds

• Restrict dashboard creation and editing privileges to trusted administrators only until the patch can be applied
• Implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule to reject Grafana API requests with excessively large dashboard configuration payloads
• Use non-Chromium browsers (such as Firefox) as a temporary mitigation, as the vulnerability specifically affects Chromium-based browsers

Organizations should prioritize upgrading to the patched version rather than relying on workarounds, as these provide only partial protection against the vulnerability.