CVE-2026-58473 in cognee
Summary
by MITRE • 07/08/2026
Cognee before 1.2.0 contains an improper access control vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to overwrite the global LLM provider configuration by self-registering an account and calling the settings endpoint, which performs no admin or superuser check. Attackers can redirect all LLM operations instance-wide to an attacker-controlled endpoint by exploiting the process-wide singleton configuration cache, enabling exfiltration of prompts, uploaded documents, extracted entities, and knowledge graph content from all users.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/08/2026
This vulnerability exists in Cognee versions prior to 1.2.0 and represents a critical improper access control flaw that fundamentally compromises the security posture of the entire system. The issue stems from insufficient authentication and authorization checks within the settings endpoint functionality, which allows any unauthenticated user to register an account and subsequently manipulate global configuration parameters. This design flaw directly violates the principle of least privilege and demonstrates a failure in implementing proper administrative access controls. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-284 Access Control Issues, specifically encompassing inadequate access control mechanisms that permit unauthorized modification of system-wide settings.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through a straightforward yet devastating attack vector where an attacker first registers a user account within the system and then invokes the settings endpoint to modify the global LLM provider configuration. The system's lack of administrative role verification or superuser authentication checks creates an exploitable path that bypasses normal security boundaries. The implementation relies on a process-wide singleton configuration cache mechanism, which means that once the configuration is modified, all subsequent LLM operations across the entire instance are redirected to the attacker-controlled endpoint. This architectural choice amplifies the impact significantly since it enables a single configuration change to affect all users and processes within the system.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends far beyond simple unauthorized access, creating a comprehensive data exfiltration capability that compromises sensitive information across multiple user domains. When attackers successfully redirect LLM operations to their controlled endpoints, they gain access to a wide range of confidential data including user prompts, uploaded documents, extracted entities, and knowledge graph content that may contain proprietary information or personal data. This represents a severe breach of data confidentiality and potentially violates privacy regulations such as GDPR or CCPA depending on the nature of the data processed. The vulnerability affects all users within the compromised instance simultaneously, making it particularly dangerous in multi-tenant environments where data isolation is expected.
The attack pattern aligns with ATT&CK technique T1566.002 Credential Stuffing and T1078 Valid Accounts, as attackers can leverage legitimate registration functionality to gain access to system configuration capabilities. The vulnerability also maps to ATT&CK technique T1003 Credential Dumping when considering the potential for extracting sensitive information through the redirected LLM operations. Organizations using affected versions of Cognee should immediately implement mitigation strategies including disabling public user registration, implementing proper authentication checks on all administrative endpoints, and establishing monitoring for unauthorized configuration changes. The recommended remediation involves upgrading to version 1.2.0 or later where proper access controls have been implemented to verify administrative privileges before allowing configuration modifications.
This vulnerability exemplifies the critical importance of implementing robust access control mechanisms in distributed systems and demonstrates how seemingly minor oversights in authentication checks can result in catastrophic security breaches. The singleton configuration pattern used by Cognee, while potentially efficient for performance reasons, introduces a single point of failure that becomes a single point of compromise when proper access controls are absent. Organizations should consider implementing additional security measures such as configuration change auditing, rate limiting on administrative endpoints, and multi-factor authentication for privileged operations to prevent similar vulnerabilities from occurring in other components of their infrastructure. The incident also highlights the necessity of comprehensive security testing including penetration testing and code reviews that specifically target access control mechanisms to identify and remediate such flaws before they can be exploited by malicious actors.