What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-44725: EMQX: Stale plugins allow grants amplify a compromised admin/API key to remote code execution

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.6 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-20 · updated 2026-10-26
• Weakness: CWE-345

Description

EMQX is a scalable and reliable MQTT broker for AI, IoT, IIoT, and connected vehicles. Prior to versions 5.8.11, 5.9.3, 5.10.4, 6.0.3, 6.1.2, and 6.2.1, the plugin-install REST API and dashboard upload accepted stale grants created with emqx ctl plugins allow because there was no five-minute grant lifetime or SHA-256 package binding. An attacker with a compromised dashboard administrator credential or API key with plugin-install permission who finds a stale allowed name and version can upload attacker-controlled bytes under the allowed .tar.gz filename through POST /api/v5/plugins/install or the dashboard plugin upload. The broker then installs and runs attacker-controlled Erlang code with the privileges of the EMQX process. This issue is fixed in versions 5.8.11, 5.9.3, 5.10.4, 6.0.3, 6.1.2, and 6.2.1.

Affected products

• EMQX: before 5.8.11; from 5.9.0, < 5.9.3; from 5.10.0, < 5.10.4; from 6.0.0, < 6.0.3; from 6.1.0, < 6.1.2; from 6.2.0, < 6.2.1

References

• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/commit/2f926359fa847dd9928a8e94d3e342f5621806f4
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/commit/efa1ca1bef1517f1f87e1d562f8db8750b6d6ce3
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/pull/17200
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/pull/17201
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/releases/tag/6.0.3
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/releases/tag/6.1.2
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/releases/tag/6.2.1
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/releases/tag/e5.10.4
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/releases/tag/e5.8.11
• https://github.com/emqx/emqx/security/advisories/GHSA-cp9x-5qwc-fj6r

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