CVE-2026-121139
Received
Received - Intake
Missing Authentication in Metasploit msf-ws REST API
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-121139, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-11-05
Last updated on: 2026-11-05
Assigner: Rapid7, Inc.
Description
Description
The Rapid7 Metasploit msf-ws suffers from a missing authentication vulnerability whereby the REST API grants an unauthenticated "bootstrap" exemption so that the very first administrator can be created when the users table is empty. While the table is empty, POST /api/v1/users is exempt from authentication by design: the route handler calls warden.authenticate!(scope: :admin_api), which resolves to AdminApiToken. The inherited ApiToken#authenticate! short-circuits and returns success!() whenever msf.auth_initialized is false, without ever evaluating AdminApiToken's administrator check. In that state the endpoint creates a user — including an administrator — for an entirely unauthenticated caller.
This issue has been fixed in version 6.5.9.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Rapid7 | Metasploit Framework | 0 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-306 | The product does not perform any authentication for functionality that requires a provable user identity or consumes a significant amount of resources. |
