Auth Bypass praisonai serve agents --api-key run unauthenticated

Summary

praisonai serve agents exposes HTTP routes that invoke registered agents. The CLI advertises --api-key with help text "API key for authentication", parses it, and forwards it into ServeHandler. But _create_agents_app() never reads config["api_key"] again and installs no auth dependency or middleware on its direct routes. The configured key is a no-op flag.

As a result, an unauthenticated network caller can invoke exposed agents (POST /agents and POST /agents/{agent_name}) even when the operator passed --api-key. Requests with no credentials, a wrong Authorization: Bearer, a wrong X-API-Key, or an empty bearer all reach agent.start().

The failure is made sharper by the fact that a working auth dependency already exists in the same module — praisonai.api.agent_invoke.verify_token guards every /api/v1/... route with Depends(verify_token) and is mounted into the very same app. The direct n8n-compat routes simply do not use it.

Technical Detail

Source-to-sink trace

1. CLI advertises and forwards --api-key:

# cli/commands/serve.py
@app.command("agents")
def serve_agents(..., api_key: Optional[str] = typer.Option(None, "--api-key", help="API key for authentication")):
    ...
    if api_key:
        args.extend(["--api-key", api_key])
    exit_code = handle_serve_command(args)

2. cmd_agents() parses api_key into the spec — and that is the last time it is touched:

# cli/features/serve.py — cmd_agents()
spec = { ..., "api_key": {"default": None} }
parsed = self._parse_args(args, spec)
app = self._create_agents_app(parsed)

A grep of the entire cli/features/serve.py for api_key returns only the two spec entries (cmd_agents line ~199 and cmd_unified line ~847). config["api_key"] is never read inside _create_agents_app() / _create_unified_app(); it is never compared, and no dependency is attached.

3. _create_agents_app() imports FastAPI, HTTPException, Request — no Depends, no Header, no auth middleware. Every HTTPException raised in the agents routes is 400/404/500 (validation / not-found / execution error); none is 401.

4. Sink — unauthenticated request reaches agent.start():

# cli/features/serve.py
@app.post("/agents/{agent_name}")          # n8n compatibility route
async def invoke_single_agent(agent_name: str, request: Request):
    body = await request.json()
    query = body.get("query", "") or body.get("message", "")
    ...
    agent = agent_invoke.get_agent(agent_name)
    result = await loop.run_in_executor(None, agent.start, query)   # no auth anywhere above
    return {"response": str(result)}
 
@app.post(path)                            # default path "/agents"
async def invoke_agents(request: Request, query_data: AgentQuery = None):
    ... agent.start(query) ...

The auth dependency exists — it just isn't applied here

_create_agents_app() mounts the agent_invoke router into the same app:

# cli/features/serve.py
if getattr(agent_invoke, 'FASTAPI_AVAILABLE', False) and hasattr(agent_invoke, 'router'):
    app.include_router(agent_invoke.router)

That router properly authenticates every sensitive route:

# api/agent_invoke.py
CALL_SERVER_TOKEN = os.getenv('CALL_SERVER_TOKEN')
async def verify_token(request, authorization=Header(None)) -> None:
    ...
    if token != CALL_SERVER_TOKEN:
        raise HTTPException(status_code=401, detail="Unauthorized")
 
@router.get("/api/v1/agents")
async def list_agents(_: None = Depends(verify_token)): ...   # and register/unregister/info all use it

So in the same process GET /api/v1/agents returns 401 without a token, while POST /agents/{agent_name} returns 200. Note also that verify_token reads the CALL_SERVER_TOKEN env var — not the CLI --api-key — so the CLI option feeds no auth path at all.

Trigger conditions

praisonai serve agents --file agents.yaml --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8765 --api-key expected-secret
POST /agents/{agent_name}   body {"query":"..."}   with no / wrong / empty credentials

Reference : https://github.com/MervinPraison/PraisonAI/security/advisories/GHSA-r7v3-x45f-g7hp