A critical privilege management vulnerability in OpenMetadata allows authenticated users to escalate their privileges to an ingestion bot role, potentially leading to unauthorized data access and destructive changes.

This is an improper privilege management issue (CWE-269) where the UI leaks JWTs via the /api/v1/ingestionPipelines endpoint. Any authenticated user with read-only access can exploit this to gain the privileges of the ingestion-bot account.

The ability for a low-privileged user to hijack an ingestion bot account poses a severe risk to the integrity and confidentiality of the metadata platform. An attacker could perform destructive modifications to the instance or exfiltrate sensitive service metadata and sample data, violating organizational access policies. With a CVSS score of 7.6, this vulnerability represents a high risk to business operations that rely on OpenMetadata for data governance.

Immediate Action: Upgrade all OpenMetadata instances to version 1.11.8 or later to patch the underlying API vulnerability.

Proactive Monitoring: Monitor API access logs for anomalous patterns involving the /api/v1/ingestionPipelines endpoint, specifically looking for unusual request volumes from standard user accounts.

Compensating Controls: Implement strict network-level access controls to limit access to the OpenMetadata UI to trusted internal networks, reducing the attack surface for potential exploitation by external or unauthorized actors.

Public Exploit Available: Unknown (No weaponized exploit or public proof-of-concept repository confirmed).

Given the potential for complete account takeover of the ingestion bot, organizations should prioritize patching this vulnerability immediately. Upgrading to version 1.11.8 is the only reliable method to eliminate the token leakage flaw and prevent unauthorized privilege escalation within the environment.