Executive Summary
The Loki Path Traversal - CVE-2021-36156 Bypass vulnerability is a medium-severity issue that can be exploited to read files at the Ruler API endpoint. The likelihood of exploitation is relatively low, but the potential business impact is moderate due to the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely without any privileges or authentication.
Enhanced Description
The affected systems and components are not explicitly listed, but the vulnerability is specific to the Loki API endpoint /loki/api/v1/rules/{namespace}. The vulnerability is currently open, and no patch or fix has been released yet. The CISA KEV status is 'No', indicating that this vulnerability is not currently being tracked by the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The vulnerability was published on 2026-04-15T00:00:00.000000Z, and thanks to Prasanth Sundararajan for reporting this issue.
Exploitation Context
A realistic exploitation scenario involves an attacker sending specially crafted requests to the affected endpoint to read sensitive files, which can be used for reconnaissance or to gain valuable insights into the target system. The attacker's motivation to exploit this vulnerability is likely driven by the desire to access sensitive information, which can be used for malicious purposes such as identity theft, financial fraud, or other types of cybercrime.
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Confidence Assessment
The confidence in the severity rating and exploitation likelihood is based on the CVSS vector and EPSS score. While the CVSS score of 5.3 indicates a medium-severity issue, the EPSS score of 0.00409 suggests a relatively low likelihood of exploitation. However, the potential business impact and the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information justify a moderate level of concern.
The CVE-2021-36156 fix validates the namespace parameter for path traversal sequences after a single URL decode, by double encoding, an attacker can read files at the Ruler API endpoint /loki/api/v1/rules/{namespace} Thanks to Prasanth Sundararajan for reporting this vulnerability.
33.7th percentile