CVE-2026-56262Critical· 9.8▾ MidnightCrawl4AI: Multiple Docker API Vulnerabilities - File Write, SSRF, Auth Bypass, XSS, JS Execution
▾ Midnight zone — Critical, or high with PoC / in-the-wild
impact 53.9 · likelihood 0.2 · exploitation 0
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Exploit-prediction probability, daily snapshots since Jul 8.
Disclosure to exploitation, from the record and what we observed since indexing it.
Disclosed via OSV
Last analysed / modified upstream
0.4%
0.4% → 0.8%
Multiple security vulnerabilities in the Crawl4AI Docker API server affecting endpoints for crawling, markdown/LLM extraction, screenshots, PDFs, webhooks, monitoring, JavaScript execution, and configuration.
The output_path parameter accepts arbitrary filesystem paths with no validation. An attacker can overwrite server files (DoS) or write to any appuser-writable location.
Fix: Added validate_output_path() restricting writes to CRAWL4AI_OUTPUT_DIR (/tmp/crawl4ai-outputs by default). Added Pydantic field_validator rejecting .. traversal sequences.
Webhook URLs in /crawl/job and /llm/job accept internal/private IPs with no validation, enabling Server-Side Request Forgery against cloud metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254), internal services, and Docker networks.
Fix: Added validate_webhook_url() with blocklist for RFC 1918, loopback, link-local, cloud metadata IPs and hostnames. Validation at both job submission and send time. Explicit follow_redirects=False.
The monitor router was mounted without token_dep dependency, making all monitoring endpoints (including destructive ones like /monitor/actions/cleanup) accessible without authentication.
Fix: Added dependencies=[Depends(token_dep)] to monitor router. Added explicit token check on WebSocket /monitor/ws endpoint.
URLs and error messages rendered in the monitor dashboard via innerHTML without escaping, enabling stored XSS via crafted crawl URLs.
Fix: Server-side html.escape() on URL and error storage. Client-side escapeHtml() wrapper on all innerHTML template injections.
The /execute_js endpoint accepts and executes arbitrary JavaScript in the server's browser with --disable-web-security enabled, combining arbitrary JS execution with SSRF capability.
Fix: Disabled by default via CRAWL4AI_EXECUTE_JS_ENABLED env var. Added SSRF blocklist on destination URL. Removed --disable-web-security from default browser args.
The JWT signing key defaults to "mysecret" in the public source code, allowing anyone to forge valid authentication tokens.
Fix: Removed default value. Added startup validation rejecting weak/short secrets. Auto-generates ephemeral key when JWT enabled but no key set.
The primary crawl entry points (/crawl, /crawl/stream, /md, /llm) fetch arbitrary user-supplied URLs with no destination validation, enabling Server-Side Request Forgery against internal services, Docker networks, and cloud metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254). A blocklist that only inspects the literal hostname is additionally bypassable via IPv6-mapped IPv4 addresses (e.g. [::ffff:169.254.169.254], [::ffff:10.0.0.1]), which resolve to the blocked private/metadata ranges but evade a naive string check.
Fix: Added URL destination validation on all crawl/md/llm entry points, reusing the SSRF blocklist (RFC 1918, loopback, link-local, cloud-metadata IPs and hostnames). IPv6-mapped IPv4 addresses are normalized to their IPv4 form before the blocklist check, closing the mapping bypass. raw:// URLs are skipped. Validation applies at request entry, not only at fetch time.
CRAWL4AI_API_TOKEN to enable authenticationSECRET_KEY (min 32 chars) if using JWTcrawl4ai < 0.8.7Upgrade to a patched release:
crawl4ai 0.8.7Connected by shared product, vendor, weakness, or advisory.
CVE-2026-56261Critical· 9.8Crawl4AI: Multiple Docker API Vulnerabilities - File Write, SSRF, Auth Bypass, XSS, JS Execution
CVE-2026-56266Critical· 9.8Crawl4AI: Multiple Docker API Vulnerabilities - File Write, SSRF, Auth Bypass, XSS, JS Execution
CVE-2026-56260Critical· 9.1Crawl4AI before 0.8.7 contains an arbitrary file write vulnerability in the Docker API server's /screenshot and /pdf endpoints
CVE-2026-56258High· 8.1Crawl4AI: Arbitrary file write (symlink/TOCTOU) plus log and webhook-header injection in Docker server
CVE-2026-57573High· 8.6Crawl4AI: Unauthenticated SSRF on the Docker server streaming crawl path (/crawl/stream)
CVE-2026-57572Critical· 10.0Crawl4AI: Unauthenticated RCE via Chromium launch-argument injection in browser_config.extra_args