CriticalCVE-2021-41277

    GeoJSON URL validation can expose server files and environment variables to unauthorized users (CVE-2021-41277)

    Published Last modified In CISA KEV since Sources: pwn.watch, CVE.org

    What is affected, what to do

    Metabase is an open source data analytics platform. In affected versions a security issue has been discovered with the custom GeoJSON map (`admin->settings->maps->custom maps->add a map`) support and potential local file inclusion (including environment variables).

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. Update Metabase to version 0.40.5. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • Metabase gte 1.0.0, < 1.40.5..*
    • Metabase lt *..0.40.5
    Fixed in
    • Metabase 0.40.5

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    10.0

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    10.0

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: pwn.watch, CVE.org

    97.2 %

    EPSS score

    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.89

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Critical
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    229.82 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    actively exploited
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    10.0 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    10.0
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    97.2 %
    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    99.89
    Critical — this CVE ranks in the top fifth of all CVEs scored today (rank ≥ 80%).
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited
    Published
    In CISA KEV since

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    CWE

    CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.

    Read in glossary
    CWE-200

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    The flaw is network-reachable without authentication and returns file contents and process environment variables directly — in typical Metabase deployments that environment holds the credentials of every connected analytics data source, so a local file inclusion escalates straight into credential theft. Metabase is frequently exposed to the internet as a BI portal or runs in SaaS setups, and this CVE sits among the vulnerabilities most likely to be exploited in the wild. Treat it as P1 wherever a Metabase instance exists; critical-P1 when the instance is internet-facing or wired to production databases carrying sensitive credentials. CISA has not flagged known ransomware use, but observed exploitation chains commonly lead to cloud-account takeover via leaked environment secrets.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Upgrade Metabase to 0.40.5 (Community) or 1.40.5 (Enterprise) or later — this is the vendor-supplied fix. Branches older than 0.40 must first be lifted to a 0.40.x line.
      • If the patch cannot ship within hours, block /api/geojson outright at the upstream reverse proxy (nginx, HAProxy, Traefik) or WAF with HTTP 403 until the upgrade is live.
      • Pull any internet-facing Metabase instance behind VPN or a zero-trust proxy, or restrict it to known admin/analyst subnets via firewall ACLs, until the fixed version is confirmed in production.
      • Rotate every secret passed to the Metabase process through environment variables (database credentials, SMTP, SSO client secrets, S3 keys, MB_ENCRYPTION_SECRET_KEY) — the flaw lets unauthenticated attackers read env vars and arbitrary local files.
      • Audit whether the Metabase service account can read sensitive paths (/etc/shadow, ~/.aws/credentials, Kubernetes service-account tokens under /var/run/secrets/...); tighten file permissions and invalidate exposed tokens where needed.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Reverse-proxy rule: allow /api/geojson only when the url query parameter is absent or exactly matches a trusted HTTPS allow-list; reject file://, jar://, ftp://, RFC1918 ranges, loopback, link-local (169.254.0.0/16) and bare hostnames.
      • WAF signature: block query strings on the GeoJSON path that contain file:, jar:, localhost, 127.0.0.1, 169.254.169.254 (cloud metadata) or path-traversal sequences like ...
      • Network segmentation: restrict the Metabase host egress to the data sources it actually consumes; deny traffic to cloud-metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254, metadata.google.internal) at the host firewall or VPC policy level.
      • Least privilege: run Metabase as a non-root user, container with readOnlyRootFilesystem, allowPrivilegeEscalation: false, and avoid mounting secret volumes the application does not strictly need.
      • Admin hardening: cut the Admin role down to a minimum user set and enforce MFA via SSO so that even post-patch, legitimate custom-map configuration cannot be abused by low-privileged accounts.
      • Track the running Metabase version via /api/session/properties (field version) in your asset inventory to catch rollbacks or unpatched shadow instances fast.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Reverse-proxy access logs: GET requests to /api/geojson?url= whose value contains file://, /etc/, /proc/, ..%2f, jar: or private IPs — every hit is an IoC. KQL shape: WebLog | where url_path == "/api/geojson" and url_query matches regex "(?i)(file:|jar:|/etc/|/proc/|169\\.254|127\\.0\\.0\\.1)".
      • Response-size anomalies on /api/geojson: non-JSON content types (text/plain, application/octet-stream) indicate the endpoint returned raw local file contents instead of GeoJSON.
      • Sysmon EID 3 / Zeek conn.log: outbound connections from the Metabase JVM process to cloud-metadata IP 169.254.169.254 or to loopback ports that are not the configured application database.
      • Linux auditd: open/openat events by the Metabase user on files outside $MB_DB_FILE, /opt/metabase, /tmp — especially /etc/passwd, /root, /home/*/.ssh.
      • Sigma shape (web server): selection: cs-uri-stem: "/api/geojson" and cs-uri-query|contains: ["file:","jar:","..","169.254"] → condition: selection → severity high.

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited: treat the vulnerability as a priority in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2. If it is exploited in your environment, check the reporting obligation under Art. 23 (early warning within 24 hours).
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    Since 11.09.2026, manufacturers of affected products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities under Art. 14 CRA, with an early warning within 24 hours via ENISA's single reporting platform.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    Metabase is an open source data analytics platform. In affected versions a security issue has been discovered with the custom GeoJSON map (`admin->settings->maps->custom maps->add a map`) support and potential local file inclusion (including environment variables). URLs were not validated prior to being loaded. This issue is fixed in a new maintenance release (0.40.5 and 1.40.5), and any subsequent release after that. If you’re unable to upgrade immediately, you can mitigate this by including rules in your reverse proxy or load balancer or WAF to provide a validation filter before the application.

    Source: pwn.watch, NVD (NIST), cvelistv5, CISA KEV Catalog, CVE.org (MITRE)

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    metabasemetabase
    • ≥ 1.0.0, < 1.40.5
    • < 0.40.5
    • 1.40.2
    • 0.40.4
    • 0.40.2
    • 1.40.4
    • 1.40.1
    • 0.40.0
    • 1.40.3
    • 0.40.1
    • 1.40.0
    • 0.40.3
    • —
    • 0.40.5
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-200Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

      Class

      The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-200

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    CISA KEV CatalogCISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)cisa.govactively exploited

    References & sources

    • github.comMetabase advisory: CVE-2021-41277x_refsource_CONFIRM, pwn-watch
    • github.commetabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322…x_refsource_MISC
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-41277government-resource
    • pwn.watchpwn.watch: Metabase GeoJSON API Local File Inclusionpwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2021-41277pwn-watch
    • cisa.govCISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogpwn-watch

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. NVD analysis modifiedNVD

    2. Record modifiedGitHub

      Show 6 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr
      Referenceremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr Types: Mitigation, Third Party Advisory
      —

      Source identifier: security-advisories@github.com

    3. Record modifiedCISA ADP

      CVSS V3.1: before AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N, after —

      Show 6 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      CVSSremoved
      AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
      —
      Weakness type (CWE)removed
      CWE-22
      —
      Affected versions (publisher)added
      —
      Affected value removed. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2021/41xxx/CVE-2021-41277.json">CVE-2021-41277</a>
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-41277
      Referenceremoved
      https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-41277
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-41277 Types: US Government Resource
      —

      Source identifier: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

    4. Record modifiedCVE Program

      Show 6 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr
      Referenceremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/commit/042a36e49574c749f944e19cf80360fd3dc322f0 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-w73v-6p7p-fpfr Types: Mitigation, Third Party Advisory
      —

      Source identifier: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108

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