CVE-2026-16895 — Authentication Bypass in Metasploit JSON-RPC Service When DB Health Check Fails
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 he…
Published: 2026-08-27 · CVSS: 5.1 · CVSS 4.0
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.
Source: CVE Program · Revision 8b16575c39f1e1810c5e863010da073d2d3285e7