GHSA-f989-c77f-r2cq
HIGHGHSA-f989-c77f-r2cq is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) Information Exposure vulnerability in crawl4ai. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-f989-c77f-r2cq is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Crawl4AI: LLM credential exfiltration in Docker server via request base_url and env: token resolution
Blast Radius
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Description
Summary
The Docker API server let a request control where LLM calls were sent and which environment variable an LLM token resolved from. Both could be abused to exfiltrate server-held secrets. The Docker API is unauthenticated by default.
Vector 1 - attacker base_url
/md, /llm, and /llm/job accepted a base_url in the request and used it as the LLM endpoint while still attaching the server's configured provider API key. An attacker set base_url to a server they control and received the provider key (and any provider keys the server holds) in the inbound request.
Vector 2 - arbitrary environment variable read via env:
LLMConfig(api_token="env:NAME") resolved NAME from the server environment with os.getenv. Because request bodies were deserialized into LLMConfig (via a crawler config / extraction strategy), an attacker could set api_token="env:SECRET_KEY" (or env:REDIS_PASSWORD, etc.) and, paired with an attacker base_url, exfiltrate that secret. Reading the server's SECRET_KEY enables forging authentication tokens.
Impact
Disclosure of LLM provider API keys and other server secrets to an attacker-controlled endpoint; reading the JWT SECRET_KEY can lead to authentication bypass.
Fix
- The LLM endpoints ignore a request-supplied
base_url; the endpoint is always derived server-side from the provider name. The field is still accepted but no longer honored (no breaking 4xx). LLMConfigrefusesenv:resolution of protected environment-variable names (names containing SECRET/PASSWORD/PRIVATE, prefixes CRAWL4AI*/AWS_SECRET*, and SECRET_KEY/REDIS_PASSWORD/TOKEN). Normal provider keys (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY) are unaffected.
Workarounds
- Upgrade to the patched version.
- Enable authentication (
CRAWL4AI_API_TOKEN). - Do not place sensitive secrets in the server environment alongside provider keys.
Credits
- Geo (geo-chen) - reported the LLM credential exfiltration via request base_url.
- Internal security audit (Crawl4AI maintainers) - the env: arbitrary-variable read.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | crawl4ai | all versions | 0.8.8 |
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 0.8.8 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-f989-c77f-r2cq 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-f989-c77f-r2cq 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-f989-c77f-r2cq. 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-f989-c77f-r2cq in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-f989-c77f-r2cq across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.