CVE-2026-87929

critical

Description

MaxSite CMS through 109.6 ships with a hardcoded session encryption key in application/config/config.php that is never changed during installation, allowing unauthenticated attackers to forge administrator session cookies. Attackers can mint a malicious ci_session cookie with administrator privileges by computing an HMAC-SHA1 using the publicly known encryption key, bypassing authentication checks in is_login() and mso_check_allow() functions.

References

https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/maxsite-cms-through-109.6-authentication-bypass-via-hardcoded-encryption-key

https://github.com/maxsite/cms/blob/2ca0a0c7d1d71106a25dbb0f2aedaaefbf12802c/application/maxsite/common/core/init.php#L70-L96

https://github.com/maxsite/cms/blob/2ca0a0c7d1d71106a25dbb0f2aedaaefbf12802c/application/config/config.php#L230-L254

https://github.com/maxsite/cms

https://github.com/EviL0rd/maxsite-cve4/blob/main/2026.09.08-maxsite-cms-hardcoded-session-key-auth-bypass.md

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-09-09

Updated: 2026-09-14

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 10

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Severity: Critical

CVSS v3

Base Score: 9.8

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity: Critical

CVSS v4

Base Score: 9.3

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

Severity: Critical

EPSS

EPSS: 0.00288