Critical incident

Harness: API Login failures

Affected: Platform, Platform, Platform, Platform

Current status of Harness: Operational — live Harness status

Timeline

1. Sep 15, 2026, 17:22 UTC
   investigating
   We are currently investigating this issue.
2. Sep 15, 2026, 17:35 UTC
   identified
   The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.
3. Sep 15, 2026, 17:43 UTC
   monitoring
   A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
4. Sep 15, 2026, 17:43 UTC
   resolved
   This incident has been resolved.
5. Sep 29, 2026, 00:11 UTC
   postmortem
   # Root Cause Analysis Report ## Brief API Login Failures Due to a Security Policy Misconfiguration ## 1. Executive Summary On September 11, 2026, a change to one of our network security policies was deployed with a configuration error. For approximately 6 minutes, this caused login requests to be incorrectly blocked, preventing some users from logging in. ‌ The issue was detected automatically by our monitoring systems. The problematic change was fully reverted within 5 minutes of detection, restoring normal login functionality. # 2. Impact * For approximately 6 minutes \(12:30–12:36 PM CT on September 11, 2026\), login requests matching certain URL paths were incorrectly blocked. * Any user attempting to log in during this window could have been affected * No other functionality was affected. Users already logged in prior to the window were not impacted. # 3. Root Cause As part of a planned security enhancement, our team implemented a new network security policy intended to block a small number of specific, exact URL paths. During implementation, the rule was configured with an erroneous matching condition instead of the intended exact-match condition. ‌ As a result, the policy blocked any request whose path began with those values, rather than only the exact paths intended , which included legitimate login requests that happened to share that prefix. This caused those login attempts to be rejected during the affected window. # 4. Resolution * The problematic policy change was identified and fully reverted within 5 minutes of the first alert. * Normal login functionality was confirmed restored immediately following the revert. # 5. Risk of Recurrence & Preventive Actions‌ | **Corrective / Preventive Action** | | --- | | Enhanced our QA validation step in the process for this class of security policy change, so the deployed configuration is checked against its intended specification before go-live. | | Enhanced automated test coverage that specifically validates exact-match versus prefix-match behavior for path-based rules, as an additional safeguard on top of the review process. |

Updates as published by Harness (original).