PYSEC-2026-2922

Summary

PraisonAI's recipe registry publish endpoint writes uploaded recipe bundles to a filesystem path derived from the bundle's internal manifest.json before it verifies that the manifest name and version match the HTTP route. A malicious publisher can place ../ traversal sequences in the bundle manifest and cause the registry server to create files outside the configured registry root even though the request is ultimately rejected with HTTP 400.

This is an arbitrary file write / path traversal issue on the registry host. It affects deployments that expose the recipe registry publish flow. If the registry is intentionally run without a token, any network client that can reach the service can trigger it. If a token is configured, any user with publish access can still exploit it.

Details

The bug is caused by the order of operations between the HTTP handler and the registry storage layer.

1. RegistryServer._handle_publish() in src/praisonai/praisonai/recipe/server.py:370-426 parses POST /v1/recipes/{name}/{version}, writes the uploaded .praison file to a temporary path, and immediately calls:

result = self.registry.publish(tmp_path, force=force)

2. LocalRegistry.publish() in src/praisonai/praisonai/recipe/registry.py:214-287 opens the uploaded tarball, reads manifest.json, and trusts the attacker-controlled name and version fields:

name = manifest.get("name")
version = manifest.get("version")
recipe_dir = self.recipes_path / name / version
recipe_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
bundle_name = f"{name}-{version}.praison"
dest_path = recipe_dir / bundle_name
shutil.copy2(bundle_path, dest_path)

3. Validation helpers already exist in the same file:

def _validate_name(name: str) -> bool:
def _validate_version(version: str) -> bool:

but they are not called before the filesystem write.

4. Only after publish() returns does the route compare the manifest values with the URL...