Metabase Zero-Day Lets Hackers Become Admins Without Authentication as Framework Customers Feel the Blow
Metabase has confirmed that attackers exploited a maximum-severity flaw in its business intelligence software as a zero-day, and the first victims are already coming forward. The company, which sells analytics dashboards used by thousands of firms to query their own databases, said the bug let an unauthenticated remote attacker inject arbitrary SQL into the Metabase application database and take administrator access to the instance. The hole carries a CVSS score of 10.0, the highest possible rating, and no CVE identifier was ever assigned to it.
Metabase said the attack hit its own managed cloud service first. "We recently identified that Metabase Cloud was attacked by someone utilizing an unknown ('0-day') security vulnerability in versions 1.58 and above," the company wrote in its security advisory. Cloud instances were patched and upgraded before the disclosure went public. Self-hosted deployments, which IT teams run on their own servers behind their own login pages, are the ones still at risk until administrators apply the fixes.
The advisory is blunt about what a takeover means for a business. Once an attacker holds admin rights, they can change the application configuration, steal the stored credentials for every database the organization has connected through Metabase, read any data those connections can reach, and export whatever they want. For a business intelligence tool, that is the crown jewels: BI servers are deliberately wired to data warehouses, production databases, and analytics stores, so one compromised instance can open up every system it was built to summarize.
Why business intelligence tools are such a rich target
Metabase sells open-source analytics software that connects to a company's databases and turns the queries into dashboards, charts, and shared reports. That makes it a data sponge by design: the platform stores connection credentials, cached query results, and user permissions, and it runs inside the trust boundary of whatever organization adopts it. A BI server is typically the one place where a data engineer, a finance analyst, and a sales manager all have accounts, which is exactly why an attacker who lands admin control of it does not need to break into the underlying warehouse separately.
Security researchers have pointed out for years that this class of software is undercounted in patch programs. Teams treat the analytics box as an internal tool and forget it is reachable from the internet, or they expose it so vendors and stakeholders can view reports without a VPN. Metabase has options for embedding dashboards and publishing them to outside users, and those options are precisely the ones that put the login endpoint within reach of the whole internet. The advisory's emphasis on the reset-password endpoint suggests the attack came in through a path designed to be publicly callable in some deployments.
The company's own disclosure timeline is thin on specifics, and Metabase says it has not shared details of the malicious activity beyond the two log markers. That is common in an active investigation, but it also leaves self-hosted operators guessing about which of their installations were hit before the patch landed. The practical answer, as in most zero-day disclosures, is to assume exposure if the reset-password endpoint was reachable and act accordingly.
What defenders should do in the next few days
For IT teams that run Metabase on their own hardware, the checklist from Metabase and from analysts tracking the incident is short but urgent. First, upgrade to the latest point release of the version line you run — 0.58.24, 0.59.21, 0.60.17, 0.61.11, 0.62.9, or 0.63.5 — and confirm the upgrade completed before you touch anything else. Second, block the password-reset endpoint at the firewall if you cannot patch in the next few hours, and remember it as a stopgap, not a fix. Third, check the logs for the two marker calls described above, and search them for both status codes on the same session.
Fourth, assume the credentials inside a compromised instance are burned. Metabase connects to data warehouses through stored connection strings, and once an attacker has admin access, those strings are retrievable. Rotate the passwords for every connected database, not just the ones you can name from memory. Fifth, review user accounts and API keys for changes you did not make, and delete the rows from the session table so every logged-in user has to authenticate again. Finally, keep the incident response documentation and the vendor advisory on hand, because a second wave of scanning is likely: within days of a disclosure like this, automated scanners start sweeping the internet for exposed Metabase login pages.
The tell-tale signs of a compromised instance
Metabase published two indicators of compromise that network teams can check in their logs right now. The first marker is a call to POST /api/session/reset_password that comes back with a 400 status code; the second is a follow-up call to GET /api/user/current that returns 200. "If you find that pattern in your organization's application logs or in your server's ingress logs, it is likely that your instance has been compromised," said Sameer Al-Sakran, the company's chief executive, in the advisory.
For operators who find those log entries, Metabase set out a cleanup checklist: revoke all active user sessions by emptying the core_session table in the application database; review API keys and remove any you do not recognize; scan administrator accounts for unexpected changes; rotate the credentials of every connected data store; and review data warehouse logs and query history for activity that does not belong. The process is familiar to any security team that has handled an exposed service, and the most important step is the one most orgs skip: assume the worst and rotate everything, not just the obvious account.
Framework confirms the customer blast radius
The first explicit victim of the zero-day to come forward is Framework, the US laptop company known for repairable, upgradeable machines. On August 6, Framework emailed all of its customers to say that customer names, login IP addresses, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses were accessed during the hack of a supplier's business intelligence platform — Metabase. Payment information was not part of the breach and was not touched, the company said.
Framework said it rotated its credentials immediately after being notified and confirmed there were no changes in admin access or access to systems outside Metabase. It is also working with a third-party forensic investigation firm and reviewing how it stores data with external database vendors. Metabase told Framework in an internal email that its findings and recommendations are "preliminary" for now.
The timing stings for Framework, which spent 2026 wrestling with the memory shortage and price increases while it ramps preorders for a new laptop and GPU kits. Losing customers' personal data in the middle of that year is a hard way to remind everyone that a breach in a supplier's stack can touch thousands of downstream companies in a single evening.
The history, reset
Metabase has been through this before with a tighter timeline. Exactly three years ago, researchers disclosed CVE-2023-38646, a CVSS 9.8 flaw in the same software that allowed pre-authenticated remote code execution. That bug was fixed, but the pattern has not changed: analytics tools are an attractive target because they sit close to the data. The last few weeks have underlined the point across the industry, from the TeamCity build-server scramble to this week's Metabase disclosure. Some takeaways for defenders, from the vendor's advisory and from teams that tracked the incident: upgrade to the newest point release of the version line you run — checking your logs for the two markers above; and keep the password-reset endpoint off the public internet unless you have a concrete reason to expose it.
The bigger point is that data visualization platforms now sit in the same threat category as build servers and VPN gateways. An unauthenticated SQL injection that yields administrator access is the whole attack in one shot: a foothold, a credential dump, and an exfiltration pipe in a single move. The exposed Metabase instances, the customer databases behind them, and the supply chains that copied their dashboards all deserve a spot on the same patch list.
- The security update advisory with the release versions and workaround details
- The official GitHub security advisory for the flaw
- The Hacker News coverage of the zero-day and the attack pattern
- Engadget's report on the Framework customer notification
- SentinelOne's reference page for the 2020s predecessor, CVE-2023-38646, the pre-auth flaw from three years ago
Keep abreast of the wider cybersecurity coverage for more analysis of vendor breaches and the patch discipline that keeps them from spreading.