CVE-2024-21513 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.5) Code Injection vulnerability in langchain-experimental. A fix is available for langchain-experimental — see the affected versions and patch details below.
langchain-experimental vulnerable to Arbitrary Code Execution
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-2024-21513.
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
langchain-experimentalReal-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
Versions of the package langchain-experimental from 0.0.15 and before 0.0.21 are vulnerable to Arbitrary Code Execution when retrieving values from the database, the code will attempt to call 'eval' on all values. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary python code if they can control the input prompt and the server is configured with VectorSQLDatabaseChain.
Notes:
Impact on the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the vulnerable component:
Confidentiality: Code execution happens within the impacted component, in this case langchain-experimental, so all resources are necessarily accessible.
Integrity: There is nothing protected by the impacted component inherently. Although anything returned from the component counts as 'information' for which the trustworthiness can be compromised.
Availability: The loss of availability isn't caused by the attack itself, but it happens as a result during the attacker's post-exploitation steps.
Impact on the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the subsequent system:
As a legitimate low-privileged user of the package (PR:L) the attacker does not have more access to data owned by the package as a result of this vulnerability than they did with normal usage (e.g. can query the DB). The unintended action that one can perform by breaking out of the app environment and exfiltrating files, making remote connections etc. happens during the post exploitation phase in the subsequent system - in this case, the OS.
AT:P: An attacker needs to be able to influence the input prompt, whilst the server is configured with the VectorSQLDatabaseChain plugin.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | langchain-experimental | all versions | 0.0.21pip install --upgrade 'langchain-experimental==0.0.21' |
Affected Products
langchain-experimentallangchainDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for langchain-experimental, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update langchain-experimental to 0.0.21 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-21513 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-21513 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.