Informa TechTarget | SearchSecurity Cybersecurity Dive InformationWeek Channel Dive Explore our brands Dark Reading Resource Library Black Hat News Omdia Cybersecurity Advertise NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Cybersecurity Topics World The Edge DR Technology Events Resources VULNERABILITIES & THREATS CYBER RISK APPLICATION SECURITY CYBERATTACKS & DATA BREACHES NEWS Metabase SQL Zero-Day Attacks Could Have Wide Blast Radius The maximum-severity vulnerability, which still has no CVE, allows malicious, remote administrator access to the business-analytics platform and its downstream users. Rob Wright,Senior News Director,Dark Reading August 10, 2026 4 Min Read SOURCE: GEORGE PETERS VIA GETTY IMAGES A zero-day SQL-injection vulnerability in Metabase Cloud is under exploitation in the wild, and it could spell trouble for many downstream organizations. Metabase, which provides AI-driven business analytics, disclosed last week that its Metabase Cloud platform had been compromised by an attacker wielding a zero-day vulnerability that impacts versions 1.58 of the platform and above. "We immediately blocked the endpoints used for the attack, then quickly identified and patched the vulnerability," Metabase CEO Sameer Al-Sakran wrote in a blog post last week. The vulnerability does not currently have a CVE identifier, but Metabase assigned it a maximum-severity CVSS score of 10. According to an accompanying advisory posted on GitHub, exploitation of the flaw allows a remote attacker to inject SQL statements into the Metabase application database, giving them administrator access to the instance. Related:Coruna, DarkSword iOS Exploits Proliferate Globally "From there, the attacker could change the application configuration, steal stored credentials for the connected databases, read any data accessible through those connections, and export data," the company said in the advisory. But the zero-day attacks could have a significant impact on organizations beyond Metabase customers. Who's Affected by the Metabase Cloud Zero-Day? No action is required by Metabase Cloud customers, whose instances have been automatically upgraded to fixed versions, according to Al-Sakran's post. But customers who self-host their Metabase instances and have exposed the /api/session/reset_password endpoint on the public Internet are still susceptible to attacks. It's unclear how many customers have been impacted, and whether the zero-day attacks were limited to Metabase Cloud or if self-hosted open source instances were also compromised. Dark Reading contacted Metabase for additional information but the company did not respond by press time. Johannes Ullrich of the SANS Internet Storm Center tells Dark Reading that the vulnerable API endpoint must be reachable for exploitation to work. "Metabase can be installed as a Docker container and as a standalone Java application. Either way, it exposes the API on port 3000 to the network," he says. "Who is able to access port 3000 would depend on if there is a network firewall configured." Ullrich says he expects most users have exposed their instances rather than restricting individual API endpoints, which he says would likely required a more granular proxy." There is no obvious reason not to expose the reset password API, as users may need it," he says. Related:Flaws in Google APK for Python Unlock Agent-to-Agent Attack SQL-injection vulnerabilities are some of the most common — and frustrating — software flaws in the world, routinely topping the OWASP Top 10 lists. "If anything stood out, it is the fact that even today we are still fighting SQL-injection flaws," Ullrich says of the zero-day. In this case, he explains, the flaw stems from a simple issue in the Metabase database application. "It apparently does not use prepared statements, which would fix this issue. But it can be difficult for software like Metabase to use prepared statements effectively," he says. "Using them would make it more difficult to support the wide range of databases they support, and implementing them is also difficult for tools like Metabase." Blast Radius for Metabase Attacks Ullrich notes that Metabase acts as a front end for processing data from a wide range of SQL databases. As a result, the compromise of Metabase Cloud, as well as the potential breach of an unknown number of self-hosted instances, gives the attacker access to a considerable amount of sensitive data that could be used in follow-on attacks against not only Metabase clients but those clients' downstream customers as well. Several victims from the Metabase attacks have already come to light. For example, n8n, a startup specializing in workflow automation, disclosed on Aug. 8 that an attacker obtained 136 customer records containing names and email addresses for both self-hosted and n8n Cloud users. Related:Attackers Exploit N-able Patch Bypass Flaw on RMM Servers N8n noted that five of the records contained bcrypt-hashed passwords of cloud accounts, and that another 25 accounts had their passwords stored in plaintext due to a previously fixed vulnerability. N8n said it was "unlikely" that those accounts were accessed during the attack, but the 25 account holders were directly contacted as a precaution. Kilo Code, a startup that makes open source AI coding agents, was also impacted by the Metabase zero-day attacks. In its disclosure on Aug. 7, the company said the Metabase Cloud breach occurred on Aug. 2 over the span of about four hours, during which the attacker accessed Kilo customer records that included "some Kilo users' names, email addresses, and other data." In an update published on Aug. 9, Kilo said its investigation into the breach revealed that the company's Slackbot was also impacted, exposing the Slack access tokens for "a small subset of Kilo users of that feature. "Out of an abundance of caution, we invalidated all Kilo Slackbot authentication tokens for these users. Affected Kilo Slackbot users were contacted," the company said. Metabase urged customers with self-hosted instances to upgrade to a fixed version of the platform "as soon as possible." If organizations are unable to patch, they should block the /api/session/reset_password endpoint. For organizations with exposed endpoints, Metabase recommended several incident response measures, including revoking all active user sessions; review all API keys and delete any unrecognized keys; and rotate all credentials for any databases connected to the platform. About the Author Rob Wright Senior News Director, Dark Reading Rob Wright is a longtime reporter with more than 25 years of experience as a technology journalist. Prior to joining Dark Reading as senior news director, he spent more than a decade at TechTarget's SearchSecurity in various roles, including senior news director, executive editor and editorial director. Before that, he worked for several years at CRN, Tom's Hardware Guide, and VARBusiness Magazine covering a variety of technology beats and trends. Prior to becoming a technology journalist in 2000, he worked as a weekly and daily newspaper reporter in Virginia, where he won three Virginia Press Association awards in 1998 and 1999. At TechTarget and Dark Reading, he has won several Azbee awards, including the 2026 National Silver Award for a series on vibe coding. At Dark Reading, Rob currently covers security operations, cloud security, and Internet infrastructure. He has a keen interest in malvertising activity and the certificate authority industry, and has written extensively on both topics. He graduated from the University of Richmond in 1997 with a degree in journalism and English. A native of Massachusetts, he lives in the Boston area. Want more Dark Reading stories in your Google search results? 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