Back to Research blog

Advisory: Metabase Pre-Auth RCE (CVE-2023-38646)

Share on social

July 22, 2023

Lorem ipsum

Table of Contents

Summary

An unauthenticated attacker can obtain the setup token for an instance and use it to achieve remote code execution via an endpoint that allows you to validate a H2 database connection. When validating the database, the H2 JDBC driver allows for the attacker to achieve RCE.

Impact

An attacker can execute arbitrary Java code on the system, leading to arbitrary command execution.

Affected Software

Metabase open source before 0.46.6.1 and Metabase Enterprise before 1.46.6.1 allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the server.

Product Description

Metabase is an open source business intelligence tool that lets you create charts and dashboards using data from a variety of databases and data sources.

Solution

Upgrade to the latest version of Metabase > v1.46.6.1.

Metabase’s official advisory can be found here.

Blog Post

The blog post detailing the steps taken for the discovery of this vulnerability can be found here.

Credits

Shubham Shah - Assetnote Security Research Team

Maxwell Garrett

Shubham Shah

Author

Shubham Shah

Chief Security Research Officer at Searchlight Cyber

Shubham Shah is Chief Security Research Officer, having joined Searchlight Cyber following the acquisition of Assetnote, where he was Co-Founder and CTO. Shubham leads the global security research team whose findings feed directly into Searchlight Exposure – surfacing zero-day vulnerabilities in the tools organisations rely on, often months ahead of public disclosure. He remains a prolific bug bounty hunter ranked in the top 50 hackers on HackerOne, and has presented at various industry events including QCon London, Kiwicon, AusCert, BSides Canberra, and CrikeyCon.

Max Garrett
MG

Author

Max Garrett

Security Researcher at Assetnote

Explore related Content

Research

Exploit brokers pay $500,000 for a WordPress RCE. I found one with GPT5.6 Sol Ultra and $25

July 20, 2026

Research

wp2shell: Pre Authentication RCE in WordPress Core

July 17, 2026

Research

Smashing the ServiceNow Sandbox – Pre Authentication RCE

July 14, 2026

Research

CargoWise WebTracker – The Keys Were in the Cargo

June 25, 2026

Research

Two Bypasses for Chrome's Sanitizer API

May 22, 2026

Research

Keys to the Kingdom: Anonymous SQL Injection in Drupal Core (CVE-2026-9082)

May 21, 2026