PraisonAI ships and generates a legacy API server with authentication disabled by default, allowing unauthenticated workflow execution

Summary

PraisonAI ships a legacy Flask API server with authentication disabled by default. When that server is used, any caller that can reach it can access /agents and trigger the configured agents.yaml workflow through /chat without providing a token.

Details

The vulnerable server is the shipped src/praisonai/api_server.py entrypoint.

• AUTH_ENABLED = False and AUTH_TOKEN = None are hard-coded at [src/praisonai/api_server.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/api_server.py:15).
• check_auth() returns True whenever authentication is disabled, so both protected routes fail open by design at [src/praisonai/api_server.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/api_server.py:18).
• POST /chat only checks that the request JSON contains a message key and then runs PraisonAI(agent_file="agents.yaml").run() at [src/praisonai/api_server.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/api_server.py:31).
• GET /agents is guarded by the same no-op authentication check and returns agent metadata at [src/praisonai/api_server.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/api_server.py:55).
• When launched directly, the same script binds to 0.0.0.0:8080 at src/praisonai/api_server.py.

The deploy subsystem keeps the same insecure authentication default:

• APIConfig defaults auth_enabled to False in [src/praisonai/praisonai/deploy/models.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/praisonai/deploy/models.py:23).
• The generated sample API deployment YAML recommends host: 0.0.0.0 together with auth_enabled: false in [src/praisonai/praisonai/deploy/schema.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/praisonai/deploy/schema.py:108).

For scope clarity: the newer serve agents command is safer by default, because it binds to 127.0.0.1 and supports --api-key in [src/praisonai/praisonai/cli/commands/serve.py](/Users/shmulc/Stuff/tmp/first-cve/scans/variant-hunt/PraisonAI/src/praisonai/praisonai/cli/commands/serve.py:155). This report is about the shipped legacy API server and the generated/sample API deployment path above.

Version scope:

• v2.5.6 already ships the same src/praisonai/api_server.py implementation.
• The current PyPI release on May 1, 2026 is 4.6.33, and it still ships the same unauthenticated server logic.

PoC

The following route-level reproduction was verified locally and proves that the shipped api_server.py exposes /agents and /chat without authentication.

1. From the repository root, create a throwaway environment with the server's direct Flask dependencies:

python3 -m venv /tmp/praisonai-ghsa-venv
/tmp/praisonai-ghsa-venv/bin/pip install flask flask-cors

2. Execute the shipped src/praisonai/api_server.py under a minimal stub for praisonai.PraisonAI so only the server auth logic is exercised:

/tmp/praisonai-ghsa-venv/bin/python - <<'PY'
import importlib.util
import pathlib
import sys
import types

stub = types.ModuleType("praisonai")

class DummyPraisonAI:
    def __init__(self, agent_file="agents.yaml"):
        self.agent_file = agent_file
    def run(self):
        return {"ran": True, "agent_file": self.agent_file}

stub.PraisonAI = DummyPraisonAI
sys.modules["praisonai"] = stub

path = pathlib.Path("src/praisonai/api_server.py").resolve()
spec = importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("api_server_local", path)
mod = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec)
spec.loader.exec_module(mod)

client = mod.app.test_client()
print(client.get("/agents").status_code, client.get("/agents").get_data(as_text=True))
print(client.post("/chat", json={"message": "hello"}).status_code, client.post("/chat", json={"message": "hello"}).get_data(as_text=True))
PY

3. Observed result:

200 {"agent_file":"agents.yaml","agents":["default"]}
200 {"response":{"agent_file":"agents.yaml","ran":true},"status":"success"}

Both endpoints succeed without any Authorization header.

Impact

Any reachable caller can invoke the legacy API server's protected functionality without a token.

At minimum, this allows:

• unauthenticated enumeration of the configured agent file through /agents
• unauthenticated triggering of the locally configured agents.yaml workflow through /chat
• repeated consumption of model/API quota and any other side effects performed by that workflow
• exposure of whatever result PraisonAI.run() returns to the unauthenticated caller

This is not the same as arbitrary prompt injection by itself, because the current /chat handler ignores the submitted message value and simply runs the configured workflow. The impact therefore depends on what the operator's agents.yaml is allowed to do, but the authentication bypass is unconditional in the shipped legacy server.