Cognee allows non-superusers to overwrite global LLM configurationGHSA-49f7-whx5-4256
CRITICALFix: topoteretes/cognee@10971dbGHSA-49f7-whx5-4256 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) Missing Authentication vulnerability in cognee. A fix is available for cognee — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-49f7-whx5-4256.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-49f7-whx5-4256 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 391,411 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
cogneeReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
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.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | cognee | all versions | 1.5.0pip install --upgrade 'cognee==1.5.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for cognee, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update cognee to 1.5.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-49f7-whx5-4256 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-49f7-whx5-4256 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.