CVE-2023-51449 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.6) Path Traversal vulnerability in gradio. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 28.3% (98th percentile). A fix is available for gradio — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Make the `/file` secure against file traversal attacks
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-51449.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-51449 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
gradioReal-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
Gradio is an open-source Python package that allows you to quickly build a demo or web application for your machine learning model, API, or any arbitary Python function. Versions of gradio prior to 4.11.0 contained a vulnerability in the /file route which made them susceptible to file traversal attacks in which an attacker could access arbitrary files on a machine running a Gradio app with a public URL (e.g. if the demo was created with share=True, or on Hugging Face Spaces) if they knew the path of files to look for. This issue has been patched in version 4.11.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | gradio | all versions | 4.11.0pip install --upgrade 'gradio==4.11.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for gradio, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update gradio to 4.11.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-51449 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2023-51449 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-51449. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
How to detect CVE-2023-51449
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2023-51449 -u https://target- Template
- Gradio Hugging Face - Local File Inclusion
- Severity
- high
- Impact
- Unauthenticated attackers can read arbitrary files from the server when authentication is not enabled, potentially exposing sensitive configuration files and credentials.
- Remediation
- Upgrade Gradio to version 3.33 or later (for Gradio < 3.x) or to version 4.11 or later (for Gradio 4.x).
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (nvn1729), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-51449 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-51449 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.