CVE-2026-53451Ground Station: Unauthenticated arbitrary file write (path traversal) in save-waterfall-snapshot leads to remote code execution
- 9.8CriticalCVSS base score
- 1.1%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 34% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
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.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Show the exploits1
References tagged exploit1 reference
- https://github.com/sgoudelis/ground-station/security/advisories/GHSA-q35x-w3h6-36w8 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMexploit
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 2 months later
· 2 months later
Published
- 2 days later
· 2 days later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Critical9.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | Critical9.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.1% · top 34% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.8.
Affected products
- affected < 0.4.13
References
References3
- https://github.com/sgoudelis/ground-station/security/advisories/GHSA-q35x-w3h6-36w8 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMexploit
- https://github.com/sgoudelis/ground-station/commit/5649905f1021155933463a54a76030924adffb9d (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/sgoudelis/ground-station/releases/tag/v0.4.13 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-62497 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-53451)Record last updated .