CVE-2025-68389 is a vulnerability classified under CWE-770, which pertains to allocation of resources without limits or throttling, discovered in Elastic Kibana versions 7.0.0 through 9.2.0. The flaw allows a low-privileged authenticated user to craft specific HTTP requests that cause excessive allocation of computing resources by the Kibana process. This excessive resource consumption can overwhelm the system, leading to a denial of service (DoS) condition where Kibana becomes unresponsive or crashes. The vulnerability does not compromise confidentiality or integrity but impacts availability, which is critical for Kibana's role in data visualization and monitoring. Exploitation requires authentication but no additional user interaction, making it feasible for insiders or attackers who have obtained valid credentials. The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.5, indicating medium severity. No public exploits or patches have been reported at the time of publication, but the risk lies in potential service disruption and operational impact. The root cause is the lack of throttling or limits on resource allocation when processing certain HTTP requests, allowing resource exhaustion attacks. Organizations using Kibana in production environments, especially those monitoring critical infrastructure or business operations, are at risk of service degradation or outages if this vulnerability is exploited.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2025-68389 is on the availability of Kibana services. Kibana is widely used for visualizing and analyzing data from Elasticsearch clusters, often integral to security monitoring, operational dashboards, and business intelligence. A denial of service caused by resource exhaustion can disrupt these critical functions, delaying incident response and operational decision-making. This is particularly impactful for sectors such as finance, telecommunications, energy, and government agencies that rely on real-time data insights. The vulnerability requires authenticated access, which somewhat limits exposure but does not eliminate risk, especially in environments with many users or where credential compromise is possible. The absence of confidentiality or integrity impact means data leakage or tampering is not a concern here, but operational continuity is at stake. Additionally, the lack of known exploits in the wild reduces immediate risk but does not preclude targeted attacks. European organizations with large-scale Kibana deployments or those integrated into critical infrastructure monitoring are at heightened risk of operational disruption.

To mitigate CVE-2025-68389, European organizations should take several specific steps beyond generic advice: 1) Implement strict access controls and minimize the number of users with Kibana authentication to reduce the attack surface. 2) Monitor Kibana HTTP request patterns for anomalies such as unusually large or frequent requests that could indicate attempts to trigger resource exhaustion. 3) Configure resource limits and throttling mechanisms at the web server or reverse proxy level to prevent excessive resource consumption from individual clients. 4) Employ rate limiting and connection limiting features where possible to restrict the impact of malicious requests. 5) Regularly update Kibana to the latest versions once Elastic releases patches addressing this vulnerability. 6) Consider network segmentation and isolation of Kibana instances to limit exposure from less trusted network segments. 7) Use monitoring tools to track Kibana process resource usage and set alerts for spikes that could indicate exploitation attempts. 8) Conduct internal audits of user privileges and authentication mechanisms to ensure only necessary users have access. These measures collectively reduce the risk of exploitation and help maintain service availability.