Ground Station: Server-Side Request Forgery
CVE-2026-53983 is a high-severity server-side request forgery vulnerability in Ground Station from Efstratios Goudelis, with a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.6 out of 10. It can be exploited remotely over the network by an unauthenticated attacker, without any action from a user. The record lists version 0.6.0 as the first without the flaw, so updating Ground Station to that release or later removes the exposure. There is no confirmed exploitation so far. EPSS estimates a 0.57% chance of exploitation within 30 days, which is low compared with other CVEs.
High severity with no evidence of exploitation so far.
What to do
- Update Ground Station to 0.6.0 or a later version.
- Read the advisory on github.com for workarounds and exact fixed builds.
- Until you can update, restrict network access to the affected service so it is not reachable from untrusted networks.
Affected products and versions
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Efstratios Goudelis | Ground Station | before 0.6.0 | 0.6.0 |
Version data comes from the organisation that assigned the CVE. Confirm against the vendor advisory before deciding you are unaffected.
How the severity score breaks down
- Attack vector
- NetworkCan be exploited remotely over a network, including the internet.
- Attack complexity
- LowNo special conditions are needed; the attack works reliably.
- Privileges required
- NoneNo account or login is needed.
- User interaction
- NoneNo action by a victim is required.
- Scope
- ChangedThe attack can reach beyond the vulnerable component into other systems.
- Confidentiality
- HighAll data handled by the component can be read.
- Integrity
- NoneNothing can be modified.
- Availability
- NoneAvailability is not affected.
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N. Scored by CNA (vulncheck.com).
| Scoring system | Score | Severity | Scored by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVSS 4.0 | 9.2 | Critical | CNA (vulncheck.com) |
| CVSS 3.1 | 8.6 | High | CNA (vulncheck.com) |
Official description
Ground Station prior to 0.6.0 contains an unauthenticated blind server-side request forgery vulnerability in the orbital-source configuration path that allows any unauthenticated Socket.IO client to cause the ground-station process to issue outbound HTTP requests to attacker-chosen destinations. Attackers can connect to the Socket.IO server on port 7000 without credentials due to disabled authentication enforcement and a wildcard CORS policy, then submit a data_submission event with submit-orbital-sources action to persist an attacker-supplied URL in the database, then trigger an orbital sync via the equally unauthenticated background_task:start event. The URL is stored with no scheme allowlist, no host validation, and no rejection of loopback, RFC1918, or link-local (cloud instance metadata at 169.254.169.254) addresses, and is passed directly to requests.get in _fetch_http_3le and _fetch_http_omm in backend/tlesync/source_adapters.py. HTTP status codes and error messages from the outbound request are emitted in the orbital_sync_state Socket.IO event to all connected clients, providing a serviceable oracle for interpreting internal-service and cloud-metadata responses even though the raw response body is not directly leaked. Because the malicious source persists in the database across restarts and re-fires every 24 hours on the scheduled sync cycle, the primitive gives durable long-term SSRF without the attacker needing to remain connected.
Source: the CVE record as published by its numbering authority, via NVD and CVE.org.
The underlying weakness: Server-Side Request Forgery
The web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination.
How developers prevent this class of flaw
- If there is a known list of applications, IP, hostname, and/or domains to which the product is allowed to communicate, then use allowlists to ensure that outgoing requests are restricted to these known entities. The allowlists could be in the application code or possibly enforced by firewalls or network segmentation.
- If the product is expected to be able to connect to arbitrary IP addresses or domains, consider using a denylist that includes private network addresses, internal domain names, etc. The denylist could be in the application code or possibly enforced by firewalls or network segmentation.
Timeline
- CVE record published.
- CISA published its SSVC assessment (exploitation: none, automatable: yes, technical impact: partial).
- Record last changed materially (score, affected products, status or references).
References
Patches and release notes
Other references
Other vulnerabilities in Ground Station
- 9.1 Critical severity
- 7.5 High severity
Recent Server-Side Request Forgery vulnerabilities
- 8.8 High severity
- 9.8 Critical severity
- 8.5 High severity
- 9.6 Critical severity
- 8.5 High severity
- 8.2 High severity
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