# CVE-2025-20370: Denial of Service (DoS) through Multiple LDAP Bind Requests in Splunk Enterprise

> A high-privilege user can cause denial of service in Splunk Enterprise by sending multiple LDAP bind requests, requiring an upgrade to fix.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.9 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 1 Oct 2025
- **Updated:** 1 Oct 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-jf74-vfwj-v8h7

## What is CVE-2025-20370?

CVE-2025-20370 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Splunk Splunk, published on 1 Oct 2025. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

In Splunk Enterprise versions below 10.0.1, 9.4.4, 9.3.6, and 9.2.8, and Splunk Cloud Platform versions below 9.3.2411.108, 9.3.2408.118 and 9.2.2406.123, a user who holds a role that contains the high-privilege capability `change_authentication`, could send multiple LDAP bind requests to a specific internal endpoint, resulting in high server CPU usage, which could potentially lead to a denial of service (DoS) until the Splunk Enterprise instance is restarted. See https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/manage-users-and-security/10.0/manage-splunk-platform-users-and-roles/define-roles-on-the-splunk-platform-with-capabilities and https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/manage-users-and-security/10.0/use-ldap-as-an-authentication-scheme/configure-ldap-with-splunk-web#cfe47e31_007f_460d_8b3d_8505ffc3f0dd__Configure_LDAP_with_Splunk_Web for more information.

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling), CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-20370?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Splunk Splunk, Splunk Splunk Cloud Platform.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-20370?

No fix has been published for CVE-2025-20370 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2025-20370 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20370 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Splunk Splunk

- [CVE-2026-20253](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20253/): Splunk Enterprise Missing Authentication for Critical Function (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-76268](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-76268/): Missing Authentication for Critical Function in the Patroni REST API in Splunk Enterprise (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2026-76284](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-76284/): Improper Neutralization in Splunk Enterprise (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2026-76285](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-76285/): Improper Adherence to Coding Standards in Splunk Enterprise (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2017-17067](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-17067/): Auth bypass in n/a (critical 9.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-20370 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-20370 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Splunk Splunk, published on 1 Oct 2025. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20370 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Splunk Splunk. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20370/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20370/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-20370
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-20370
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-20370

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20370/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.