Splunk Under Fire: High-Risk Vulnerabilities Threaten Enterprise Security At The Core

Splunk, a cornerstone of enterprise security operations, is facing significant threats due to newly discovered high-severity vulnerabilities.

Understanding the Splunk Vulnerabilities

Splunk Enterprise, a pivotal tool for security operations, logging, and monitoring, is currently under scrutiny due to a series of high-severity vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2022-43563, 43565, 43566, 43567, and 43570, affect versions below 8.2.9, 8.1.12, and 9.0.2. The flaws primarily impact how Splunk handles the rex and tstats commands, permission inheritance, mobile alerting, and custom XML Views. This improper safeguarding allows low-privileged or phished users to execute risky commands, leading to significant security breaches.

The core issue with these vulnerabilities is the inadequate enforcement of SPL (Search Processing Language) security policies. Attackers can exploit these weaknesses to bypass security measures, potentially leading to privilege escalation, remote command execution, and XML-based injection attacks. Although exploitation requires user interaction via phishing, the potential damage from a successful attack is severe.

Potential Business Impacts

The implications of these vulnerabilities extend far beyond technical concerns, posing substantial business risks. If compromised, Splunk could be leveraged to obscure attacker activity, manipulate logs, or exfiltrate sensitive data. Such breaches can cripple incident response efforts, leaving security operations blind and undermining the organization's regulatory compliance.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and government are particularly vulnerable due to the sensitive nature of the data they handle. A compromised Splunk instance in these sectors could lead to catastrophic consequences, including financial losses, reputational damage, and legal ramifications.

In-Depth Technical Analysis

A deeper analysis of the disclosed Splunk vulnerabilities reveals how these flaws expose critical components of Splunk Enterprise to potential exploitation, particularly when user interaction (e.g., phishing) is involved. These issues target Splunk’s Search Processing Language (SPL), execution logic, and web interface features.

🧨 CVE-2022-43563 & CVE-2022-43565 – SPL Safeguard Bypass via rex and tstats Commands

These vulnerabilities affect the rex and tstats SPL commands, allowing attackers to bypass built-in security restrictions (SPL safeguards) that are designed to prevent the execution of risky search operations.
When combined with social engineering (e.g., phishing), a malicious actor can trick a user into running an injected SPL query in their browser, potentially executing commands that would normally be blocked or restricted. This could lead to unauthorized access, data extraction, or system changes under the user's permissions.

🧨 CVE-2022-43566 – Privilege Escalation via Analytics Workspace

This flaw allows a low-privileged, authenticated user to execute risky SPL commands as a more privileged user within the Analytics Workspace. By manipulating how permissions are inherited or misused, the attacker may bypass search role restrictions and gain access to sensitive data or perform high-privilege actions. The attack still requires phishing but can escalate access within the system significantly once triggered.

🧨 CVE-2022-43567 – Remote OS Command Execution via Splunk Secure Gateway

This critical vulnerability affects the mobile alerts functionality within the Splunk Secure Gateway app. A specially crafted request can trigger arbitrary operating system command execution remotely. While this still depends on phishing the victim into initiating the action, successful exploitation provides direct access to the system shell, which could lead to full server compromise or lateral movement across internal systems.

🧨 CVE-2022-43570 – XXE Injection via Custom Views in Splunk Web

Through custom XML views, attackers can perform XML External Entity (XXE) injection, a known technique to read local files or perform server-side request forgery (SSRF). Exploiting this may allow access to configuration files, credential material, or remote systems, potentially breaching data isolation or internal network boundaries.

Importance of Penetration Testing and Skilled Staffing

Penetration testing remains critical to a robust security strategy, even for trusted vendor software like Splunk. Internal red teams are essential for identifying risky dashboard setups and overlooked command permissions that attackers could exploit.

Organizations must invest in hiring Splunk-literate engineers and detection specialists to maintain a strong security posture. These professionals bring the necessary expertise to identify vulnerabilities, implement adequate safeguards, and respond swiftly to threats.

Best Practices for Mitigation

   - To mitigate the risks associated with these vulnerabilities, organizations should adhere to the following best practices:

  - Patch to the latest versions: Ensure Splunk is updated to versions 8.2.9+, 8.1.12+, or 9.0.2+.

  - Enforce least privilege in search roles: Limit user permissions to the minimum necessary to reduce the risk of exploitation.

  - Educate users about phishing: Conduct regular training sessions to raise awareness about phishing techniques and how to avoid them.

  - Disable unused or risky SPL commands: Review and disable any unnecessary SPL commands that attackers could exploit.

  - Monitor with audit logs and Defender for Cloud: Implement continuous monitoring to detect and respond to suspicious activities promptly.

References

For further information on the identified vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies, refer to the following sources:

SVD-2022-1103 (CVE-2022-43563)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security/announcements/svd-2022-1103.html

SVD-2022-1105 (CVE-2022-43565)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security/announcements/svd-2022-1105.html

SVD-2022-1106 (CVE-2022-43566)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security/announcements/svd-2022-1106.html

SVD-2022-1107 (CVE-2022-43567)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security/announcements/svd-2022-1107.html

SVD-2022-1110 (CVE-2022-43570)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/product-security/announcements/svd-2022-1110.html

These references provide detailed insights into the vulnerabilities and recommended actions to safeguard enterprise security.