GHSA-vffh-x6r8-xx99 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: go — Prometheus has Stored XSS via metric names and label values in Prometheus web UI tooltips and metrics explorer
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time series database. Versions 3.0 through 3.5.1 and 3.6.0 through 3.11.1 have stored cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in multiple components of the Prometheus web UI where metric names and label values are injected into innerHTML without escaping. In both the Mantine UI and old React UI, chart tooltips on the Graph page render metric names containing HTML/JavaScript without sanitization. In the old React UI, the Metric Explorer fuzzy search results use dangerouslySetInnerHTML without escaping, and heatmap cell tooltips interpolate le label values without sanitization. With Prometheus v3.x defaulting to UTF-8 metric and label name validation, characters like <, >, and " are now valid in metric names and labels. An attacker who can inject metrics via a compromised scrape target, remote write, or OTLP receiver endpoint can execute arbitrary JavaScript in the browser of any Prometheus user who views the metric in the Graph UI, potentially enabling configuration exfiltration, data deletion, or Prometheus shutdown depending on enabled flags. This issue has been fixed in versions 3.5.2 and 3.11.2. If developers are unable to immediately update, the following workarounds are recommended: ensure that the remote write receiver (--web.enable-remote-write-receiver) and the OTLP receiver (--web.enable-otlp-receiver) are not exposed to untrusted sources; verify that all scrape targets are trusted and not under attacker control; avoid enabling admin or mutating API endpoints (e.g., --web.enable-admin-api or --web.enable-lifecycle) in environments where untrusted data may be ingested; and refrain from clicking untrusted links, particularly those containing functions such as label_replace, as they may generate poisoned label names and values.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-40179 is rated Low Risk (22.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.01%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-04-16 | — | 0.01% | — |
Full EPSS history (1 record total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.3 | 4.0 | MEDIUM |
|
— | — | [email protected] |
| 6.1 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
2.8 | 2.7 | [email protected] |
GHSA-vffh-x6r8-xx99 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: go — Prometheus has Stored XSS via metric names and label values in Prometheus web UI tooltips and metrics explorer
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
unimportant | CVE-2026-40179 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (prometheus), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-40179 |
suse
|
medium | — | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-40179/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2026-40179 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (prometheus), 8 status rows across 8 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, resolute, upstream, xenial): needs-triage 7, not-affected 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-40179 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| prometheus | prometheus | >= 3.0.0, < 3.5.2 | cpe:2.3:a:prometheus:prometheus:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| prometheus | prometheus | >= 3.6.0, < 3.11.2 | cpe:2.3:a:prometheus:prometheus:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/commit/07c6232d159bfb474a077788be184d87adcfac3c | Patch |
| https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/pull/18506 | Issue Tracking Patch |
| https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/security/advisories/GHSA-vffh-x6r8-xx99 | Mitigation Vendor Advisory |