VulnerabilityPublished 18 Dec 2025

CVE-2025-68387: Elastic Kibana · XSS or 'Cross-site Scripting'

Affects Elastic KibanaSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.1 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.1Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 12% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 18 Dec 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Elastic Kibana	Affected 7.0.0 – 9.2.0 4 affected builds	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

European organizations should prioritize the following mitigations: 1) Monitor Elastic's official channels for patches addressing CVE-2025-68387 and apply them promptly once available. 2) Restrict access to Kibana interfaces to trusted internal networks or VPNs, minimizing exposure to unauthenticated external users. 3) Implement strict Content Security Policies (CSP) to limit execution of unauthorized scripts within Kibana web pages. 4) Conduct thorough input validation and sanitization on any user-supplied data that may be rendered in Kibana dashboards or visualizations, especially those using Vega AST components. 5) Educate users on the risks of interacting with untrusted links or dashboards to reduce the likelihood of successful social engineering. 6) Employ web application firewalls (WAFs) with rules targeting XSS attack patterns to detect and block malicious payloads. 7) Review and audit Kibana usage logs to detect anomalous access or suspicious dashboard modifications. 8) Consider deploying multi-factor authentication (MFA) for Kibana access to reduce impact if session tokens are compromised. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on network segmentation, CSP enforcement, and user awareness tailored to the specific Vega AST vector.

Description

Improper neutralization of input during web page generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (CWE-79) allows an unauthenticated user to embed a malicious script in content that will be served to web browsers causing cross-site scripting (XSS) (CAPEC-63) via a vulnerability a function handler in the Vega AST evaluator.

Impact

For European organizations, this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information such as session tokens or user credentials, enabling attackers to hijack sessions or escalate privileges within Kibana. Integrity of displayed data could be compromised, misleading analysts or decision-makers relying on Kibana dashboards. Although availability is not directly impacted, the trustworthiness of monitoring and logging data could be undermined. Organizations in sectors like finance, government, energy, and telecommunications that use Kibana extensively for operational intelligence are at higher risk. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to conduct targeted phishing or spear-phishing campaigns by embedding malicious scripts in shared dashboards or reports. The unauthenticated nature of the vulnerability increases the attack surface, especially for Kibana instances exposed to the internet or accessible by multiple users. The requirement for user interaction means social engineering or insider threat vectors could facilitate exploitation. Overall, the vulnerability could degrade security posture, cause data leakage, and impact compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR if personal or sensitive data is exposed.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-8-19-9-9-1-9-and-9-2-3-security-update-esa-2025-35/384183 (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 25 Dec 2025, 23:38 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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