Security Digest · Critical advisory (no CVE assigned)
GHSA-r253-r9jw-qg44: Crawl4AI: Unauthenticated RCE via Chromium launch-argument injection in browser_config.extra_args
Summary The Docker API server accepted a request-supplied browserconfig.extraargs, which flowed into Chromium's launch arguments.
CVSS 10.0 Critical GitHub-reviewed · critical
Should you act?
- Only if you depend on one of the packages below, directly or transitively, in a vulnerable version. Check your lockfile with
pip-audit (or: pip show <package>). - No CVE has been assigned, so it will not appear in CVE-based scanners that ignore GitHub advisories.
npm audit,pip-auditand Dependabot do read GitHub advisories.
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable | First fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | crawl4ai | <= 0.8.9 | 0.9.0 |
Details
Summary
The Docker API server accepted a request-supplied browserconfig.extraargs, which flowed into Chromium's launch arguments. An attacker could inject Chromium switches that replace a child-process launch command (--utility-cmd-prefix, --renderer-cmd-prefix, --gpu-launcher, --browser-subprocess-path) together with --no-zygote, causing Chromium to fork/exec an attacker-controlled command as the container's runtime user. The Docker API is unauthenticated by default, so a single request yields arbitrary command execution.
The earlier extraargs SSRF patch (0.8.9) used a denylist scoped to proxy/DNS flags; a denylist of launch switches is inherently incomplete, and these command-execution switches were not covered.
Affected paths
/crawl, /crawl/stream, /crawl/job accepting a request browserconfig.extraargs.
Impact
Unauthenticated remote code execution as the container runtime user; full read/write of application data, mounted secrets, environment, and tokens, and out-of-band exfiltration independent of the HTTP response.
Fix
CVSS: 10.0 (v3.1) CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Sources and references
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-r253-r9jw-qg44 github.com
- github.com github.com