A time-of-create-to-time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability lets recently deleted-then-recreated data sources be re-deleted without permission to do so.

This requires several very stringent conditions to be met:

• The attacker must have admin access to the specific datasource prior to its first deletion.
• Upon deletion, all steps within the attack must happen within the next 30 seconds and on the same pod of Grafana.
• The attacker must delete the datasource, then someone must recreate it.
• The new datasource must not have the attacker as an admin.
• The new datasource must have the same UID as the prior datasource. These are randomised by default.
• The datasource can now be re-deleted by the attacker.
• Once 30 seconds are up, the attack is spent and cannot be repeated.
• No datasource with any other UID can be attacked.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-21725
• https://grafana.com/security/security-advisories/cve-2026-21725