CVE-2026-85425

MOOS-IvP iSay, a text-to-speech/announcement application in the open-source MOOS-IvP autonomy middleware, fails to sanitize the contents of the SAY_MOOS variable before passing it to a shell command, resulting in OS command injection (CWE-78). An attacker who can publish a SAY_MOOS message — for example by connecting to the MOOSDB that the iSay process subscribes to — can embed backticks or other command-substitution syntax that the shell will execute. Successful exploitation gives arbitrary command execution with the privileges of the user running the iSay process, and the CVSS 4.0 score (9.3, critical) reflects full potential loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability on the affected host. Any deployment running iSay in MOOS-IvP releases through 24.8.1 is affected; this middleware is used primarily in academic, naval, and marine-robotics autonomy projects rather than mass-market products. No public proof-of-concept, KEV listing, or confirmed in-the-wild exploitation is known, and EPSS estimates only about a 1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What to do: Deployments running iSay should upgrade to a release newer than 24.8.1 as soon as a fixed version is available. Until then, restrict which MOOS clients can publish SAY_MOOS on the MOOSDB, limit MOOSDB connectivity to trusted hosts, and run iSay under an unprivileged account so injected commands have limited impact. Administrators should also check whether iSay is actively running in their deployments and review for unexpected child processes spawned by it.