CVE-2026-16895
A logic vulnerability (fail-open condition) has been identified within the Metasploit Framework's JSON-RPC web service interface. When an exception occurs during the database health check (db.check) and the environment variable MSF_WS_JSON_RPC_API_TOKEN is not explicitly set, the application resets the internal state flag msf.auth_initialized to false. The ApiToken Warden authentication strategy misinterprets this false value as an indicator that authentication is not initialized or required, thereby granting unauthenticated local access to the JSON-RPC request dispatcher.
Scoring
- Severity
- MEDIUM
- CVSS base score
- 5.1
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N
- EPSS probability
- 0.16%
- CWE
- CWE-305
- Published
- 2026-08-27
- Last modified
- 2026-08-27
Affected products
- Rapid7 Metasploit-framework
Weakness type
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