CVE-2026-46701 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.6) CWE-346 vulnerability in network-ai. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-46701 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Network-AI: Unauthenticated Cross-Origin MCP Tool Invocation via Empty Default Secret
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-46701.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-46701 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 360,781 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
network-ainpmDescription
Network-AI is a TypeScript/Node.js multi-agent orchestrator. Prior to version 5.4.5, the MCP SSE server defaults to an empty secret (process.env['NETWORK_AI_MCP_SECRET'] ?? '' at bin/mcp-server.ts:89), which causes _isAuthorized (lib/mcp-transport-sse.ts:254) to return true unconditionally for every request — no Authorization header is required. Simultaneously, _handleRequest sets Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * (lib/mcp-transport-sse.ts:272) on every response, so a cross-origin browser fetch can read the result without restriction. An unauthenticated attacker who can lure a user to a malicious web page can invoke all 22 exposed MCP tools — including config_set, agent_spawn, and blackboard_write — against a default-configured localhost server. Version 5.4.5 patches the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | network-ai | all versions | 5.4.5 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for network-ai. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update network-ai to 5.4.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-46701 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-46701 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-46701. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-46701 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-46701 across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.