What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-76338: Improper Authentication through REST API Distributed Search Token Requests in Splunk Enterprise
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-08-19 · updated 2026-08-27
- Weakness: CWE-287
Description
In Splunk Enterprise versions below 10.4.2, 10.2.6, 10.0.9, and 9.4.14, an unauthenticated user who has access to a trusted distributed search private key could forge an administrative session token, access all relevant data, affect system integrity, and disrupt service availability. The vulnerability is possible because the distributed search authentication token endpoint does not require a signed request to identify a configured search peer, allowing the request to fall back to shared local key material. For more information see About distributed search (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/distributed-search/10.4/overview-of-distributed-search/about-distributed-search) and authentication.conf (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/admin-manual/10.4/configuration-file-reference/10.4.2-configuration-file-reference/authentication.conf) in Splunk documentation.
Affected products
- Splunk Enterprise: from 9.4.0 before 9.4.14; from 10.0.0 before 10.0.9; from 10.2.0 before 10.2.6; from 10.4.0 before 10.4.2 — fixed in 10.0.9, 10.2.6, 10.4.2, 9.4.14
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Splunk Enterprise 10.0.9, 10.2.6, 10.4.2, 9.4.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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