CVE-2023-2356 is a critical-severity (CVSS 10) CWE-23 vulnerability in mlflow. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for mlflow — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Relative Path Traversal in mlflow/mlflow
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-2356.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
mlflowReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Relative Path Traversal in GitHub repository mlflow/mlflow prior to 2.3.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | mlflow | all versions | 2.3.1pip install --upgrade 'mlflow==2.3.1' |
Affected Products
mlflowlfprojectsResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for mlflow, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update mlflow to 2.3.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-2356 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
How to detect CVE-2023-2356
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2023-2356 -u https://target- Template
- Mlflow <2.3.0 - Local File Inclusion
- Severity
- high
- Impact
- Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to read sensitive files on the server.
- Remediation
- Upgrade Mlflow to version 2.3.0 or above to mitigate the vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (Co5mos), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This vulnerability is rated as Important for Red Hat environments running MLflow tracking servers, because an unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit improper path resolution to access and manipulate sensitive files outside the intended storage directories. Because tracking servers are often deployed to coordinate…
Restrict network access to the MLflow tracking server so that it is accessible only from trusted administrative networks or localhost. If MLflow is hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, firewall rules can be configured to block untrusted external traffic to the service port (default TCP 5000): # firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-source=<TRUSTED_CIDR> # firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --remove-port=5000/tcp # firewall-cmd --reload Caveats: Restricting network reachability prevents unauthorized or external clients from querying metrics or logging artifacts. Applying firewall configuration changes via reload may temporarily disrupt active network connections. --- CME…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2023-2356 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-2356 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.