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GHSA-9c4x-5hgq-q3wh

MediumCVSS 6.5 / 10
Published Dec 8, 2021·Last modified Mar 13, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

Some inline secrets are exposed in plaintext over the Grafana Agent HTTP server:

  • Inline secrets for metrics instance configs in the base YAML file are exposed at /-/config
  • Inline secrets for integrations are exposed at /-/config
  • Inline secrets for Consul ACL tokens and ETCD basic auth when configured for the scraping service at /-/config.
  • Inline secrets for the Kafka receiver for OpenTelemetry-Collector tracing at /-/config.
  • Inline secrets for metrics instance configs loaded from the scraping service are exposed at /agent/api/v1/configs/{name}.

Inline secrets will be exposed to anyone being able to reach these endpoints.

Secrets found in these sections are used for:

  • Delivering metrics to a Prometheus Remote Write system
  • Authenticating against a system for discovering Prometheus targets
  • Authenticating against a system for collecting metrics (scrape_configs and integrations)
  • Authenticating against a Consul or ETCD for storing configurations to distribute in scraping service mode
  • Authenticating against Kafka for receiving traces

Non-inlined secrets, such as *_file-based secrets, are not impacted by this vulnerability.

Patches

Download v0.20.1 or any version past v0.21.2 to patch Grafana Agent. These patches obfuscate the listed impacted secrets from the vulnerable endpoints.

The patches also disable the endpoints by default. Pass the command-line flag --config.enable-read-api to opt-in and re-enable the endpoints.

Workarounds

If for some reason you cannot upgrade, use non-inline secrets where possible. Not all configuration options may have a non-inline equivalent.

You also may desire to restrict API access to Grafana Agent, with some combination of:

  • Restrict network interfaces Grafana Agent listens on through http_listen_address in the server block. 127.0.0.1 is the most restrictive, 0.0.0.0 is the default.
  • Configure Grafana Agent to use HTTPS with client authentication.
  • Use firewall rules to restrict external access to Grafana Agent's API.
Risk Scores
Base Score
6.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a low impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a low impact on the integrity of the data.

Threat Intelligence
6.0

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
0.74%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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