Executive brief
A vulnerability exists in the Health & Safety application of NASA's Core Flight System, which is a foundational software framework used in satellite and spacecraft missions. An attacker could remotely trigger a system crash by sending a routine telemetry request, potentially leading to a loss of spacecraft monitoring or control capabilities. This issue causes a denial-of-service condition that could disrupt mission operations.
Technical details
A NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476) exists in the Health & Safety (HS) application of NASA's Core Flight System (cFS). The vulnerability is triggered when the application processes a routine Housekeeping Telemetry request, leading to a segmentation fault and subsequent application crash. The attack can be executed over the network without authentication or user interaction. Successful exploitation results in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition for the HS application, which is responsible for monitoring the status of the flight system. NASA has released version v7.0.1 to address this flaw.
Affected products
- NASA Core Flight System (cFS) Health & Safety (HS) Application < v7.0.1
Timeline
- 2026-07-16: advisory: CISA and NVD published the advisory.
- 2026-05-14: patched: Version v7.0.1 released on GitHub.