CVE-2024-49375

Vulnerability

A vulnerability has been identified in Rasa Pro and Rasa Open Source that enables an attacker who has the ability to load a maliciously crafted model remotely into a Rasa instance to achieve Remote Code Execution.

The prerequisites for this are:

• The HTTP API must be enabled on the Rasa instance eg with --enable-api. This is not the default configuration.
• For unauthenticated RCE to be exploitable, the user must not have configured any authentication or other security controls recommended in our documentation.
• For authenticated RCE, the attacker must posses a valid authentication token or JWT to interact with the Rasa API.

Mitigation Advice

• The unauthenticated RCE can be mitigated by ensuring that you enable authentication for the Rasa HTTP API if this is enabled. This means that in addition to passing --enable-api to Rasa, you should also pass an authentication configuration as described in our documentation here.

• The authenticated RCE can be mitigated by:

  • Ensuring that you only load models from trusted sources such as your own CI pipelines. You can check file hashes for model archives to confirm that a model has not been tampered with between training and use.
  • Confirming that you have sufficient access controls and utilize the principle of least privilege to control who in your organization has the ability to interact with the Rasa API even with authentication enabled.

Future Releases

As an additional security step, a future release of Rasa Pro will remove the ability to enable the API without any authentication method enabled.

Credit

Rasa would like to thank Julian Scheid from Deutsche Telekom Security GmbH for responsible disclosure of this vulnerability.

Untrusted input is evaluated as executable code within the application's runtime environment. Typical impact: arbitrary code execution within the application's privilege context.

CVE-2024-49375 has a CVSS score of 9.0 (Critical). The vector is network-reachable, no privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (3.10.12, 3.9.16, 3.8.18, 3.6.21); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

Kodem intelligence

We encourage you to upgrade to a version of Rasa that includes a fix. These are:

• Rasa Pro 3.8.18, 3.9.16, 3.10.12
• Rasa Open Source 3.6.21

Once you have upgraded your Rasa Pro or Open Source installation, you will need to retrain your model using the fixed version of Rasa Pro or Open Source. If you have a custom component that inherits from one of the components listed below and modified the persist or load method, make sure to update your code. Please contact us in case you encounter any problems.

Affected components:

• CountVectorFeaturizer
• LexicalSyntacticFeaturizer
• LogisticRegressionClassifier
• SklearnIntentClassifier
• DIETClassifier
• CRFEntityExtractor
• TrackerFeaturizer
• TEDPolicy
• UnexpectedIntentTEDPolicy

If you are unable to upgrade immediately, please follow our mitigation advice below.

1. What is CVE-2024-49375? CVE-2024-49375 is a critical-severity code injection vulnerability in rasa-pro (pip), affecting versions >= 3.10.0, < 3.10.12. It is fixed in 3.10.12, 3.9.16, 3.8.18, 3.6.21. Untrusted input is evaluated as executable code within the application's runtime environment.
2. How severe is CVE-2024-49375? CVE-2024-49375 has a CVSS score of 9.0 (Critical). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
3. Which packages are affected by CVE-2024-49375?
   • rasa-pro (pip) (versions >= 3.10.0, < 3.10.12)
   • rasa (pip) (versions < 3.6.21)
4. Is there a fix for CVE-2024-49375? Yes. CVE-2024-49375 is fixed in 3.10.12, 3.9.16, 3.8.18, 3.6.21. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is CVE-2024-49375 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2024-49375 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
6. What actually determines whether CVE-2024-49375 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
7. How do I fix CVE-2024-49375?
   • Upgrade rasa-pro to 3.10.12 or later
   • Upgrade rasa-pro to 3.9.16 or later
   • Upgrade rasa-pro to 3.8.18 or later
   • Upgrade rasa to 3.6.21 or later