Unauthenticated service crash via avatar goroutine leak
Published Jan 27, 2026 · Updated Jan 27, 2026
Denial of service in affected Grafana and Grafana Enterprise releases allows remote attackers to crash the server via avatar requests. An uncached /avatar/:hash request starts a refresh goroutine that blocks on an unbuffered result channel when the 10-slot queue exceeds the three-second handler timeout. No authentication or user interaction is required; sustained requests using random hashes grow memory use until the Grafana process crashes on affected systems.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in affected Grafana and Grafana Enterprise releases allows remote attackers to crash the server via avatar requests. An uncached /avatar/:hash request starts a refresh goroutine that blocks on an unbuffered result channel when the 10-slot queue exceeds the three-second handler timeout. No authentication or user interaction is required; sustained requests using random hashes grow memory use until the Grafana process crashes on affected systems.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-21720
- Published
- Jan 27, 2026
- Updated
- Jan 27, 2026
- Vendor
- Grafana Labs
- Product
- Grafana
- Classifications
- CWE-772, CWE-703, CWE-400, T1499.003
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jan 27, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 27, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=3.0.0 <11.6.9
- Affected versionversion=3.0.0 <12.0.8
- Affected versionversion=3.0.0 <12.1.5
- Affected versionversion=3.0.0 <12.2.3
- Affected versionversion=3.0.0 <12.3.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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