CVE-2026-16895: RAPID7 Metasploit-Framework

Medium severity, CVSS 5.1. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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

• RAPID7 Metasploit-Framework: before 6.5.2 (fixed in 6.5.2)

Published 2026-08-27. Last modified 2026-08-28.