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

published 2026-08-19 2 mo ago modified 2026-09-18 51 d ago also EUVD-2026-62497

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

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

links 2

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: Proof of concept is public
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: total
Assessed: 2 mo ago (2026-08-21)

Exploit prediction

1.08% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 65% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

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

CVE List CVE-2026-53451
NVD CVE-2026-53451

Fencer Vulns 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.

Summary