What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-7373: Metasploit Pro on Windows: Local Privilege Escalation via OpenSSL Configuration File Loading
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.5 v4.0)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-05-15 · updated 2026-10-26
- Weakness: CWE-284
Description
Rapid7 Metasploit Pro is vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack that allows a user to gain SYSTEM level control of a Windows host. When started the metasploitPostgreSQL service would start the postgres.exe child process which would in turn load an OpenSSL configuration file from a static location. This static location would be writable by a pre-existing "vagrant" user, if they already existed on the system. Metasploit does not create local accounts, an Administrator would need to create it. By planting a crafted openssl.cnf file an attacker can trick the high-privilege service into executing arbitrary commands. This effectively permits the unprivileged vagrant user to bypass security controls and achieve a full host compromise under the agent's SYSTEM level access.
Affected products
- Rapid7 Metasploit Framework: 5.0.0
References
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