GHSA-cjjf-27cc-pvmv CVE-2025-61773 PYSEC-2026-1816
pyLoad CNL and captcha handlers allow Code Injection via unsanitized parameters
High
PyPI
- Severity
- 8.1 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.52%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 43.98% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-116 Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output
- CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection')
- CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
- Fix
0.5.0b3.dev91- Upgrade pyload-ng to this version or later
Description
Summary
pyLoad web interface contained insufficient input validation in both the Captcha script endpoint and the Click'N'Load (CNL) Blueprint. This flaw allowed untrusted user input to be processed unsafely, which could be exploited by an attacker to inject arbitrary content into the web UI or manipulate request handling. The vulnerability could lead to client-side code execution (XSS) or other unintended behaviors when a malicious payload is submitted.
user-supplied parameters from HTTP requests were not adequately validated or sanitized before being passed into the application logic and response generation. This allowed crafted input to alter the expected execution flow. CNL (Click'N'Load) blueprint exposed unsafe handling of untrusted parameters in HTTP requests. The application did not consistently enforce input validation or encoding, making it possible for an attacker to craft malicious requests.
PoC
- Run a vulnerable version of pyLoad prior to commit
f9d27f2. - Start the web UI and access the Captcha or CNL endpoints.
- Submit a crafted request containing malicious JavaScript payloads in unvalidated parameters (
/flash/addcrypted2?jk=function(){alert(1)}&crypted=12345). - Observe that the payload is reflected and executed in the client’s browser, demonstrating cross-site scripting (XSS).
Example request:
GET /flash/addcrypted2?jk=function(){alert(1)}&crypted=12345 HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8000
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 107
Refferences
Impact
Exploiting this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject and execute arbitrary JavaScript within the browser session of a user accessing the pyLoad Web UI. In practice, this means an attacker could impersonate an administrator, steal authentication cookies or tokens, and perform unauthorized actions on behalf of the victim. Because the affected endpoints are part of the core interface, a successful attack undermines the trust and security of the entire application, potentially leading to a full compromise of the management interface and the data it controls. The impact is particularly severe in cases where the Web UI is exposed over a network without additional access restrictions, as it enables remote attackers to directly target users with crafted links or requests that trigger the vulnerability.
Affected versions
PyPI
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| pyload-ng | < 0.5.0b3.dev91 |
0.5.0b3.dev91 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
pyload-ng PyPI → 0.5.0b3.dev91
- pip
pip install --upgrade "pyload-ng>=0.5.0b3.dev91"- poetry
poetry add "pyload-ng>=0.5.0b3.dev91"- uv
uv add "pyload-ng>=0.5.0b3.dev91"
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 8.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
Weakness
CWE-116: Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output
The product prepares a structured message for communication with another component, but encoding or escaping of the data is either missing or done incorrectly. As a result, the intended structure of the message is not preserved.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. For example, consider using the ESAPI Encoding control [REF-45] or a similar tool, library, or framework. These will help the programmer encode outputs in a manner less prone to error. Alternately, use built-in functions, but consider using wrappers in case those functions are discovered to have a vulnerability.
- Architecture and Design: If available, use structured mechanisms that automatically enforce the separation between data and code. These mechanisms may be able to provide the relevant quoting, encoding, and validation automatically, instead of relying on the developer to provide this capability at every point where output is generated. For example, stored procedures can enforce database query structure and reduce the likelihood of SQL injection.
- Architecture and Design, Implementation: Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages. Study all expected communication protocols and data representations to determine the required encoding strategies.
- Architecture and Design: In some cases, input validation may be an important strategy when output encoding is not a complete solution. For example, you may be providing the same output that will be processed by multiple consumers that use different encodings or representations. In other cases, you may be required to allow user-supplied input to contain control information, such as limited HTML tags that support formatting in a wiki or bulletin board. When this type of requirement must be met, use an extremely strict allowlist to limit which control sequences can be used. Verify that the resulting syntactic structure is what you expect. Use your normal encoding methods for the remainder of the input.
- Architecture and Design: Use input validation as a defense-in-depth measure to reduce the likelihood of output encoding errors (see CWE-20).
- Requirements: Fully specify which encodings are required by components that will be communicating with each other.
- Implementation: When exchanging data between components, ensure that both components are using the same character encoding. Ensure that the proper encoding is applied at each interface. Explicitly set the encoding you are using whenever the protocol allows you to do so.
CWE-74: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection')
The product constructs all or part of a command, data structure, or record using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify how it is parsed or interpreted when it is sent to a downstream component.
How to prevent it
- Requirements: Programming languages and supporting technologies might be chosen which are not subject to these issues.
- Implementation: Utilize an appropriate mix of allowlist and denylist parsing to filter control-plane syntax from all input.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid [REF-1482]. Examples of libraries and frameworks that make it easier to generate properly encoded output include Microsoft's Anti-XSS library, the OWASP ESAPI Encoding module, and Apache Wicket.
- Implementation, Architecture and Design: Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages. Study all expected communication protocols and data representations to determine the required encoding strategies. For any data that will be output to another web page, especially any data that was received from external inputs, use the appropriate encoding on all non-alphanumeric characters. Parts of the same output document may require different encodings, which will vary depending on whether the output is in the: HTML body Element attributes (such as src="XYZ") URIs JavaScript sections Cascading Style Sheets and style property etc. Note that HTML Entity Encoding is only appropriate for the HTML body. Consult the XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet [REF-724] for more details on the types of encoding and escaping that are needed.
- Architecture and Design, Implementation: Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide data to the application. Remember that such inputs may be obtained indirectly through API calls.
- Architecture and Design: For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
- Architecture and Design: If available, use structured mechanisms that automatically enforce the separation between data and code. These mechanisms may be able to provide the relevant quoting, encoding, and validation automatically, instead of relying on the developer to provide this capability at every point where output is generated.
- Implementation: Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8. When an encoding is not specified, a downstream component may choose a different encoding, either by assuming a default encoding or automatically inferring which encoding is being used, which can be erroneous. When the encodings are inconsistent, the downstream component might treat some character or byte sequences as special, even if they are not special in the original encoding. Attackers might then be able to exploit this discrepancy and conduct injection attacks; they even might be able to bypass protection mechanisms that assume the original encoding is also being used by the downstream component. The problem of inconsistent output encodings often arises in web pages. If an encoding is not specified in an HTTP header, web browsers often guess about which encoding is being used. This can open up the browser to subtle XSS attacks.
- Implementation: With Struts, write all data from form beans with the bean's filter attribute set to true.
- Implementation: To help mitigate XSS attacks against the user's session cookie, set the session cookie to be HttpOnly. In browsers that support the HttpOnly feature (such as more recent versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox), this attribute can prevent the user's session cookie from being accessible to malicious client-side scripts that use document.cookie. This is not a complete solution, since HttpOnly is not supported by all browsers. More importantly, XmlHttpRequest and other powerful browser technologies provide read access to HTTP headers, including the Set-Cookie header in which the HttpOnly flag is set.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright. When dynamically constructing web pages, use stringent allowlists that limit the character set based on the expected value of the parameter in the request. All input should be validated and cleansed, not just parameters that the user is supposed to specify, but all data in the request, including hidden fields, cookies, headers, the URL itself, and so forth. A common mistake that leads to continuing XSS vulnerabilities is to validate only fields that are expected to be redisplayed by the site. It is common to see data from the request that is reflected by the application server or the application that the development team did not anticipate. Also, a field that is not currently reflected may be used by a future developer. Therefore, validating ALL parts of the HTTP request is recommended. Note that proper output encoding, escaping, and quoting is the most ef
- Architecture and Design: When the set of acceptable objects, such as filenames or URLs, is limited or known, create a mapping from a set of fixed input values (such as numeric IDs) to the actual filenames or URLs, and reject all other inputs.
- Operation: Use an application firewall that can detect attacks against this weakness. It can be beneficial in cases in which the code cannot be fixed (because it is controlled by a third party), as an emergency prevention measure while more comprehensive software assurance measures are applied, or to provide defense in depth [REF-1481].
- Operation, Implementation: When using PHP, configure the application so that it does not use register_globals. During implementation, develop the application so that it does not rely on this feature, but be wary of implementing a register_globals emulation that is subject to weaknesses such as CWE-95, CWE-621, and similar issues.
CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
The product constructs all or part of a code segment using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the syntax or behavior of the intended code segment.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Refactor your program so that you do not have to dynamically generate code.
- Architecture and Design: Run your code in a "jail" or similar sandbox environment that enforces strict boundaries between the process and the operating system. This may effectively restrict which code can be executed by your product. Examples include the Unix chroot jail and AppArmor. In general, managed code may provide some protection. This may not be a feasible solution, and it only limits the impact to the operating system; the rest of your application may still be subject to compromise. Be careful to avoid CWE-243 and other weaknesses related to jails.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright. To reduce the likelihood of code injection, use stringent allowlists that limit which constructs are allowed. If you are dynamically constructing code that invokes a function, then verifying that the input is alphanumeric might be insufficient. An attacker might still be able to reference a dangerous function that you did not intend to allow, such as system(), exec(), or exit().
- Testing: Use dynamic tools and techniques that interact with the product using large test suites with many diverse inputs, such as fuzz testing (fuzzing), robustness testing, and fault injection. The product's operation may slow down, but it should not become unstable, crash, or generate incorrect results.
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Implementation: For Python programs, it is frequently encouraged to use the ast.literal_eval() function instead of eval, since it is intentionally designed to avoid executing code. However, an adversary could still cause excessive memory or stack consumption via deeply nested structures [REF-1372], so the python documentation discourages use of ast.literal_eval() on untrusted data [REF-1373].
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-68w4-83fh-f2w8 pyload-ng: getUserData/get_userdata exposed at Perms.ANY allow any authenticated account to brute-force the administrator password | High | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-9q47-3cm2-2rp8 pyLoad: Rate-Limit Bypass and Audit-Log Spoofing via Trusted Client-Controlled `X-Forwarded-For` Header | Medium | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-jq7h-wrvp-3rgx pyLoad: Privilege revocation and password change through the REST API do not invalidate the user's session | High | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-889w-m37p-88m5 pyLoad: Api.set_user_permission never invalidates the target's session | High | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-p3pr-8f3m-4qp8 pyLoad WindowsPhoneNotify addon: non-admin SETTINGS user triggers SSRF via unguarded http.client notification host | Medium | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-fr26-jjhm-638c pyLoad: Tar extraction creates device nodes and FIFOs (member types not filtered; tarfile extractall without filter=) | High | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-r44w-v6gf-x3p6 pyLoad has an authentication bypass in API key validation (check_apikey cache) | High | Also affects pyload-ng |
| GHSA-j92p-c242-7hfx pyLoad: Unauthenticated access to /web/<path:filename> bypasses authentication on sensitive templates and leaks internal error details via exception attribute typo | Medium | Also affects pyload-ng |
MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.
Check your repos with MergeHarbor