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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2026-53451 json

Ground Station: Unauthenticated arbitrary file write (path traversal) in save-waterfall-snapshot leads to remote code execution

published 5mo ago modified last mo. also EUVD-2026-62497 , GHSA-q35x-w3h6-36w8

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository sgoudelis/ground-station. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.1%
EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 65%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Ground Station is a browser-based suite for satellite tracking, SDR reception, hardware control, and telemetry decoding. Prior to version 0.4.13, the unauthenticated save-waterfall-snapshot Socket.IO command passes attacker-controlled snapshotName input from backend/handlers/entities/sdr.py to backend/server/snapshots.py, where os.path.join permits an absolute path or parent-directory traversal and writes attacker-controlled base64-decoded bytes outside backend/data/snapshots. An attacker can write a logging YAML file containing a logging.config.dictConfig callable factory, use the unauthenticated update-app-config operation to set log_config to that file, and invoke restart_service. During restart, backend/common/logger.py passes the YAML through resolve_log_config_path(), yaml.safe_load(), and logging.config.dictConfig(), which executes the factory with service privileges and can also cause a persistent crash loop. This issue is fixed in version 0.4.13.

Patch / fix

Is CVE-2026-53451 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2mo ago

Exploit prediction

1.08% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 65% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/sgoudelis/ground-station/security/advisories/GHSA-q35x-w3h6-36w8 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • sgoudelis ground-station

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
  • CWE-73 External Control of File Name or Path
  • CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of sgoudelis/ground-station published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.