CVE-2026-40159
PraisonAI Exposes Sensitive Environment Variable via Untrusted MCP Subprocess Execution
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 5.5 Medium
- Published
- Apr 10, 2026
- Updated
- Apr 15, 2026
- Reserved
- Apr 9, 2026
Description
PraisonAI is a multi-agent teams system. Prior to 4.5.128, PraisonAI’s MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration allows spawning background servers via stdio using user-supplied command strings (e.g., MCP("npx -y @smithery/cli ...")). These commands are executed through Python’s subprocess module. By default, the implementation forwards the entire parent process environment to the spawned subprocess. As a result, any MCP command executed in this manner inherits all environment variables from the host process, including sensitive data such as API keys, authentication tokens, and database credentials. This behavior introduces a security risk when untrusted or third-party commands are used. In common scenarios where MCP tools are invoked via package runners such as npx -y, arbitrary code from external or potentially compromised packages may execute with access to these inherited environment variables. This creates a risk of unintended credential exposure and enables potential supply chain attacks through silent exfiltration of secrets. This vulnerability is fixed in 4.5.128.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 5.5 Medium | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N | GitHub_M |
Weaknesses
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
PraisonAIMervinPraison |
|
References
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