CVE-2026-61740
CriticalCVSS 9.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk30th percentile - higher than 30% of all known CVEs
Summary
In LightRAG prior to 1.5.4, when LIGHTRAG_API_KEY is set but AUTH_ACCOUNTS is unset, X-API-Key protection can be bypassed. The system falls back to a hardcoded DEFAULT_TOKEN_SECRET, and /auth-status and /login can mint guest JWTs that are accepted before checking the API key. A remote unauthenticated attacker can call guarded endpoints, including document read, upload, deletion, graph mutation, and query endpoints.
Risk Assessment
The organization is exposed to unauthorized access to sensitive data and operations, such as document modification or queries, potentially leading to information leakage or system integrity compromise.
Recommendation
Immediately upgrade LightRAG to version 1.5.4 or later. If upgrading is not possible, set the AUTH_ACCOUNTS variable to enforce proper authentication.
Other vulnerabilities in LightRAG
See all- CVE-2026-61808Critical
LightRAG through version 1.5.4 has an API server that binds to all network interfaces with authentication disabled by default, allowing an unauthenticated network attacker to read indexed document content, upload or delete documents, modify the knowledge graph, cancel pipelines, clear caches, and consume LLM resources.
- CVE-2026-61736Critical
LightRAG before version 1.5.4 defaults to CORS_ORIGINS=* combined with allow_credentials=True, causing Starlette CORSMiddleware to whitelist every origin for credentialed cross-origin requests. An attacker can make authenticated API requests from a malicious website, exfiltrating documents and knowledge graph data or performing destructive actions.
- CVE-2026-39413Medium
LightRAG prior to version 1.4.14 is vulnerable to a JWT algorithm confusion attack where an attacker can forge tokens by specifying 'alg': 'none' in the JWT header. The jwt.decode() call does not explicitly deny the 'none' algorithm, so a crafted token without a signature is accepted as valid, leading to unauthorized access. Fixed in version 1.4.14.
Original NVD description (English source)
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.