What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-61740: LightRAG: Authentication bypass: hardcoded DEFAULT_TOKEN_SECRET and public /auth-status defeat LIGHTRAG_API_KEY protection

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.3 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-07-15 · updated 2026-10-24
• Weakness: CWE-287

Description

LightRAG provides simple and fast retrieval-augmented generation. Prior to 1.5.4, when LightRAG is deployed with LIGHTRAG_API_KEY set but AUTH_ACCOUNTS unset, X-API-Key protection can be bypassed because lightrag/api/auth.py falls back to a hardcoded DEFAULT_TOKEN_SECRET, /auth-status and /login can mint guest JWTs, and combined_dependency in lightrag/api/utils_api.py accepts a valid guest token before checking the API key. A remote unauthenticated attacker can call endpoints guarded by combined_auth, including document read, upload, deletion, graph mutation, and query endpoints. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.5.4.

Affected products

• HKUDS LightRAG: before 1.5.4

References

• https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG/commit/f7819aa3a49a9d8d92eed8251d82d6ebcafa8cba
• https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG/pull/3319
• https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG/releases/tag/v1.5.4
• https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG/security/advisories/GHSA-f4vv-55c2-5789
• https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG/security/advisories/GHSA-f4vv-55c2-5789

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