CVE-2026-70479: Open WebUI: Playwright SSRF leaks cloud metadata
GHSA-w2rx-84hp-gg95 HIGH PoC AVAILABLE CISA: TRACK*Open WebUI's optional Playwright web loader validates the destination address only for the initial page request, but not for any follow-up requests the loaded page's own JavaScript issues — so an authenticated user, with no admin role required, can point web search or RAG ingestion at a page that pivots to internal-only addresses like the cloud instance metadata endpoint and have the response handed straight back in the result. This is a read primitive with no write or availability impact, but it directly targets the trust boundary CISOs care about in agentic/RAG deployments: the browser process the AI feature drives often sits inside the network perimeter with reachability the end user shouldn't have. Blast radius is bounded — EPSS puts it in the top 82% most likely to be exploited among all CVEs, it is not in CISA KEV, and it only bites deployments that explicitly set WEB_LOADER_ENGINE=playwright rather than the default engine — but a PoC demonstrating the unvalidated sub-resource path already exists publicly. Confirm whether the Playwright loader is enabled in your Open WebUI deployment; if so, upgrade to 0.11.0 immediately (fix commit bef63a2ae, no config change needed) or, as an interim step, disable the Playwright loader engine or firewall the browser container from cloud metadata and internal service ranges.
What is the risk?
High severity (CVSS 7.7, AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H) reflecting network-exploitable, low-complexity, low-privilege access to confidentiality-impacting data with a scope change (browser process reaches beyond the AI app's own trust boundary). Exploitation likelihood is moderate: EPSS is low in absolute terms (0.0026) but ranks in the top 82nd percentile, a PoC exists, and CISA's SSVC decision is TRACK_STAR (track with priority, not immediate action). The real gating factor is exposure, not exploit availability — this only affects deployments that opt into WEB_LOADER_ENGINE=playwright, and only where the browser process has a network path to something sensitive (cloud metadata, sibling containers, internal APIs). Deployments on the default web loader, or whose Playwright container is fully network-isolated, are not exposed. Not in CISA KEV and no active exploitation reported.
How does the attack unfold?
What systems are affected?
| Package | Ecosystem | Vulnerable Range | Patched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open WebUI | pip | >= 0.9.6, < 0.11.0 | 0.11.0 |
Do you use Open WebUI? You're affected.
How severe is it?
What is the attack surface?
What should I do?
1 step-
Upgrade Open WebUI to 0.11.0 or later — the fix validates every intercepted request (not just the top-level document), disables redirects and re-validates on each hop, blocks service-worker requests, and refuses to establish WebSocket connections through the interceptor; no configuration change is required post-upgrade. If immediate upgrade isn't possible: disable the Playwright web loader (revert to the default engine) until patched, or restrict network egress from the Playwright browser container/VM so it cannot reach cloud metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254, metadata.google.internal, etc.), other application containers, or internal-only address ranges. Detection: review web-loader/RAG ingestion logs for submitted URLs pointing at link-local (169.254.0.0/16), loopback, or RFC1918 addresses, and audit outbound connections from the Playwright browser process for destinations outside expected external ranges.
What does CISA's SSVC say?
Source: CISA Vulnrichment (SSVC v2.0). Decision based on the CISA Coordinator decision tree.
How is it classified?
Which compliance frameworks are affected?
This CVE is relevant to:
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CVE-2026-70479?
Open WebUI's optional Playwright web loader validates the destination address only for the initial page request, but not for any follow-up requests the loaded page's own JavaScript issues — so an authenticated user, with no admin role required, can point web search or RAG ingestion at a page that pivots to internal-only addresses like the cloud instance metadata endpoint and have the response handed straight back in the result. This is a read primitive with no write or availability impact, but it directly targets the trust boundary CISOs care about in agentic/RAG deployments: the browser process the AI feature drives often sits inside the network perimeter with reachability the end user shouldn't have. Blast radius is bounded — EPSS puts it in the top 82% most likely to be exploited among all CVEs, it is not in CISA KEV, and it only bites deployments that explicitly set WEB_LOADER_ENGINE=playwright rather than the default engine — but a PoC demonstrating the unvalidated sub-resource path already exists publicly. Confirm whether the Playwright loader is enabled in your Open WebUI deployment; if so, upgrade to 0.11.0 immediately (fix commit bef63a2ae, no config change needed) or, as an interim step, disable the Playwright loader engine or firewall the browser container from cloud metadata and internal service ranges.
Is CVE-2026-70479 actively exploited?
Proof-of-concept exploit code is publicly available for CVE-2026-70479, increasing the risk of exploitation.
How to fix CVE-2026-70479?
Upgrade Open WebUI to 0.11.0 or later — the fix validates every intercepted request (not just the top-level document), disables redirects and re-validates on each hop, blocks service-worker requests, and refuses to establish WebSocket connections through the interceptor; no configuration change is required post-upgrade. If immediate upgrade isn't possible: disable the Playwright web loader (revert to the default engine) until patched, or restrict network egress from the Playwright browser container/VM so it cannot reach cloud metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254, metadata.google.internal, etc.), other application containers, or internal-only address ranges. Detection: review web-loader/RAG ingestion logs for submitted URLs pointing at link-local (169.254.0.0/16), loopback, or RFC1918 addresses, and audit outbound connections from the Playwright browser process for destinations outside expected external ranges.
What systems are affected by CVE-2026-70479?
This vulnerability affects the following AI/ML architecture patterns: RAG pipelines, web-search ingestion pipelines, agent frameworks.
What is the CVSS score for CVE-2026-70479?
CVE-2026-70479 has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.7 (HIGH). The EPSS exploitation probability is 0.27%.
What is the AI security impact?
Affected AI Architectures
MITRE ATLAS Techniques
AML.T0025 Exfiltration via Cyber Means AML.T0049 Exploit Public-Facing Application AML.T0075 Cloud Service Discovery Compliance Controls Affected
What are the technical details?
Original Advisory
## Summary With the Playwright web loader enabled, Open WebUI opens user-submitted URLs in a real browser and validates the destination address before allowing the request. That check only ran for the top-level page request. Every other request the page issued was passed through unvalidated, so a page could use its own JavaScript to reach addresses the validation exists to block. Because the loader returns the page's final DOM to the requesting user, anything the page read back from those addresses ends up in the web-search or RAG output. ## Preconditions - `WEB_LOADER_ENGINE=playwright`. This is not the default; deployments on the default web loader are unaffected. - A reachable Playwright browser, either local or via `PLAYWRIGHT_WS_URL`. - Any authenticated user who can submit a URL for ingestion or trigger a web search. No administrator role is required. - Something worth reading on a network the browser can reach. A deployment whose browser container has no route to internal services loses nothing here. ## Impact An authenticated user can read HTTP responses from services reachable by the browser process: cloud instance metadata, other containers on the same network, and internal APIs bound to private addresses. The content is returned to the user through the normal web-search or document-ingestion result, so this is a read primitive, not a blind one. It confers no write access and no availability impact, and it does not extend beyond what the browser's network position already allows. ## Fix Fixed in 0.11.0 by commit `bef63a2ae`. Every intercepted request is now validated, fetched with redirects disabled, re-validated on each redirect hop and then fulfilled, so neither a sub-resource nor a redirect can land on a non-global address. The same change blocks the two paths that never reached the interceptor at all: service-worker requests, via `service_workers="block"`, and WebSocket connections, via a route handler that never connects upstream. Upgrading to 0.11.0 fully resolves the issue; no configuration change is required. ## Root cause Affected component: `SafePlaywrightURLLoader` in `backend/open_webui/retrieval/web/utils.py`, in both the sync and async request interceptors. Affected setup: only builds running the Playwright loader engine. The interceptor was written to guard navigation, and its first action was to return early for any request whose resource type was not `document`. The intent was that only the page the user asked for needs address validation, but a browser page is not a single request: once the validated document loads, its scripts issue further requests under the page's own control, and those never reached the validation. The address check was therefore applied to the one request the attacker did not need to control, and skipped on every request they did. ## Proof of concept Reported against 0.10.2 by driving the interceptor directly with stand-in route and request objects, one call per resource type, against `http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/`. The `document` type is aborted; every other type is continued unvalidated. The browser and the network request were seeded rather than driven end to end; the code path exercised is the one the browser reaches for each sub-resource. ## Credits - **@edwardav970** — identified that address validation was applied only to the top-level document request, leaving every sub-resource type unvalidated.
Exploitation Scenario
A low-privileged authenticated user of an Open WebUI deployment running the Playwright web loader submits, via chat or web search, a URL to an attacker-controlled page. Open WebUI's browser opens the page; the top-level navigation passes address validation because it points to an innocuous external URL. Once loaded, the page's own JavaScript fires a background fetch to http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ — a sub-resource request that the interceptor never validates because that check only fires for the 'document' resource type. The browser follows the request, retrieves the cloud metadata (or an internal service's response), and the final DOM — now containing that leaked content — is returned to the user as the 'web search' or 'ingested document' result, completing the read without ever touching a blocked address at the top level.
Weaknesses (CWE)
CWE-918 — Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF): The web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination.
Source: MITRE CWE corpus.
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N References
Timeline
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