GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c
HIGHGHSA-6qhc-x826-342c is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in crawl4ai. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Crawl4AI: SSRF via proxy settings in the Docker server bypasses the crawl-URL SSRF check
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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 GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c.
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
GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c 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 0 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
crawl4aiReal-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
Summary
The Docker API server applied its SSRF destination check to the crawl target URL only, not to the proxy address. An unauthenticated request could supply a proxy pointing at an internal IP and route the browser through it, reaching internal services and cloud-metadata endpoints, while using a perfectly valid crawl URL. The Docker API is unauthenticated by default.
Affected paths
/crawl, /crawl/stream, and /crawl/job accept a browser_config (and crawler_config). The following all feed Chromium's egress and were unchecked:
browser_config.proxy_config.serverbrowser_config.proxy(deprecated field)crawler_config.proxy_config.server--proxy-server/--proxy-pac-url/--proxy-bypass-list/--host-resolver-rulesflags inbrowser_config.extra_args
Attack
An attacker sends /crawl with a benign, validation-passing URL but a proxy_config.server pointing at an internal IP. Chromium routes all requests through that proxy. For plain-HTTP targets the proxy receives the full request and can return any content, which is then returned verbatim in the crawl result (results[0].html / cleaned_html / markdown). In a real deployment the proxy would be an attacker-controlled server pointing at cloud metadata (e.g. AWS IMDSv1 at 169.254.169.254) to retrieve IAM credential tokens.
Impact
Unauthenticated server-side request forgery to internal services and cloud-metadata endpoints, with the response returned to the attacker.
Fix
Every proxy destination is validated with the same global-routability check used for crawl URLs (reject any resolved address that is not is_global, including IPv6 transition forms) before the browser is constructed; proxy/DNS-redirecting flags are stripped from extra_args. A legitimate public proxy still works. Honors CRAWL4AI_ALLOW_INTERNAL_URLS.
Workarounds
- Upgrade to the patched version (0.8.9).
- Enable authentication (
CRAWL4AI_API_TOKEN). - Restrict the container's outbound network access (egress firewall / no metadata route).
Credits
Geo (geo-chen) - reported the proxy_config.server SSRF with a clear PoC.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | crawl4ai | all versions | 0.8.9 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for crawl4ai. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update crawl4ai to 0.8.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-6qhc-x826-342c across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.