Vulnerability · Published Aug 27, 2026 · Assigned by rapid7
CVE-2026-16895Authentication Bypass in Metasploit JSON-RPC Service When DB Health Check Fails
Medium 5.1
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in Metasploit-framework from Rapid7. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 14% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
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.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Rapid7 | Metasploit-framework | 0 – before 6.5.2 |
Weakness: CWE-305 · 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