OpenC3 COSMOS: Permissions Bypass Provides User Access to Unassigned Administrative Actions via Script Runner Tool
Date: 2026-04
Affected: rubygems/openc3
Attack vector: other
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Critical
CWE: CWE-250
CVSS: 9.6 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N)

**Vulnerability Type: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges Attack type: Authenticated remote Impact: Data disclosure/manipulation, privilege escalation Affected components: The following docker images: • Openc3inc/openc3-COSMOS-script-runner-api** The Script Runner widget allows users to execute Python and Ruby scripts directly from the openc3-COSMOS-script-runner-api container. Because all the docker containers share a network, users can execute specially crafted scripts to bypass the API permissions check and perform administrative actions, including reading and modifying data inside the Redis database, which can be used to read secrets and change COSMOS settings, as well as read and write to the buckets service, which holds configuration, log, and plugin files. These actions are normally only available from the Admin Console or with administrative privileges. Any user with permission to create and run scripts can connect to any service in the docker network. <img width="940" height="473" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/bf524163-127d-4349-999b-cefc53d4374d" /> Figure 1: Environment variables, including Redis credentials, found in the Script Runner container A Ruby script is used to expose the Redis username, password, hostname, and port. These credentials might also be found from the source code or through a brute-force attack. <img width="940" height="507" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6d3ccad4-949d-4eeb-a5f


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):