CVE-2026-109437 PUBLISHED

Cognition < 0.13.0 Unauthenticated RCE via Local Shell Backend

Assigner: VulnCheck
Reserved: 12.10.2026 Published: 19.10.2026 Updated: 19.10.2026

Cognition before 0.13.0 contains an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability due to defaulting its agent sandbox backend to local execution and shipping no authentication on its REST/SSE API. Attackers can create a session via POST /sessions and post a message via POST /sessions/{id}/messages without credentials, causing the Deep Agents ReAct loop to run attacker-directed shell commands through the local shell backend, resulting in remote code execution as the server process.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 9.2

Product Status

Vendor CognicellAI
Product Cognition
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 0.13.0 (excl.)

Solutions

Upgrade to Cognition 0.13.0 or later. Version 0.13.0 refuses the local sandbox backend unless COGNITION_ALLOW_UNSAFE_LOCAL_EXECUTION is explicitly set to true, and that setting defaults to false.

Credits

  • Noy Pearl finder
  • Michael Sromin finder
  • Ophir Dror finder

References

Problem Types

  • Initialization of a Resource with an Insecure Default CWE
  • Missing Authentication for Critical Function CWE