What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-40596: Splunk Enterprise on Windows Privilege Escalation due to Insecure OPENSSLDIR Build Definition Reference in DLL

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-08-30 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-665

Description

In Splunk Enterprise versions earlier than 8.2.12, 9.0.6, and 9.1.1, a dynamic link library (DLL) that ships with Splunk Enterprise references an insecure path for the OPENSSLDIR build definition. An attacker can abuse this reference and subsequently install malicious code to achieve privilege escalation on the Windows machine.

Affected products

• Splunk Enterprise: from 8.2.0 before 8.2.12; from 9.0.0 before 9.0.6; 9.1.0 — fixed in 8.2.12, 9.0.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Splunk Enterprise 8.2.12, 9.0.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://advisory.splunk.com/advisories/SVD-2023-0805
• https://advisory.splunk.com/advisories/SVD-2023-0805

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