The open-source data integration platform faces ongoing security challenges that demand immediate attention from administrators and developers.
Recent disclosures highlight critical flaws in its authorization mechanisms and data handling processes, potentially exposing sensitive data flows to unauthorized access.
NiFi Security Vulnerability Issues
An uncovered CVE-2024-56512, a bypass in Process Group creation that skips fine-grained authorization checks for referenced Parameters and Controller Services.
This flaw affects NiFi versions 1.10.0 through 2.0.0, where authenticated users with basic Process Group permissions can inadvertently access restricted components.
The vulnerability requires component-based policies but undermines NiFi’s role-based access controls, risking data leakage in multi-tenant environments.
Another pressing concern, CVE-2023-34468, enables remote code execution via malicious H2 JDBC URLs in database connection pools.
Attackers with write access to Controller Services can craft connection strings that trigger arbitrary Java code during processor execution.
While authentication is needed, the CVSS 8.8 score underscores its severity, especially since public exploits surfaced by late 2023. NiFi 1.22.0 addressed this by disabling H2 URLs by default.
CVE-2025-27017 exposes MongoDB credentials in provenance events, logged during PutMongo operations. These events, queryable via the API, reveal plaintext passwords if record writers fail gracefully on auth errors.
Deployments with exposed provenance endpoints face risks of credential theft, prompting urgent log scrubbing and upgrades to NiFi 1.24.0 or 2.0.0-M1.
Older flaws persist in unpatched systems. CVE-2022-33140 in the Shell User Group Provider mishandles command neutralization, allowing shell injection for privilege escalation.
Affecting NiFi 1.10.0-1.16.2 and Registry variants, it scores highly due to a cluster-wide impact; fixed in 1.20.0.
CVE-2020-9486 leaks sensitive flow configs in stateless bootstrap logs, while CVE-2020-9491 permits weak TLS in intra-cluster comms, both affecting versions 1.10.0-1.11.4.
CVE-2019-10083 echoes unauthorized Process Group details in API responses.
Vulnerability Allow Authentication Bypass
Exploitation vectors often chain authentication bypasses through NiFi’s flow-based architecture. For instance, CVE-2024-56512 allows attackers to create forbidden services within a new Process Group, thereby querying sensitive data without directly violating policy.
RCE via CVE-2023-34468 exploits DBConnectionPoolService in processors like QueryDatabaseTable, where H2’s “create=true” mode executes init scripts.
Provenance APIs amplify risks; CVE-2025-27017 details show credentials in JSON events like {“provenance”: {“details”: “auth failed: user/pass”}}.
Attackers query /provenance with filters to harvest them. Cluster setups exacerbate issues because Site-to-Site protocols propagate tainted flows.
Detection relies on auditing NiFi logs for anomalous Process Group ccreationsor H2 connections. Tools like Falco or OSSEC can monitor changes to flow.json.
Mitigation demands least-privilege policies: restrict Controller Service writes and enable provenance encryption.
Prioritize upgrades: patch to the latest stable NiFi (2.1.0+). Disable H2 drivers via nifi.properties: nifi.database.contents.db.urls.file=disabled. Enforce TLS 1.3 and mutual auth for clusters.
Audit policies with the /access/policies endpoint; revoke broad Process Group creations. Rotate exposed credentials from provenance.
Run NiFi in containerized isolation with seccomp profiles to limit RCE blast radius.
Apache NIFi, scanning exposed NiFi instances over 2,700 noted in 2023, should firewall /nifi-api/provenance and enable multi-factor auth. Regular flow validation via NiFi CLI prevents config drift.
Site: cybersecuritypath.com
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