VU#280377: Dokploy is vulnerable to OS command injection

Overview

Dokploy versions 0.29.8 and 0.29.11, as well as commit 24b02f5 on the canary branch, are vulnerable to OS command injection during the backup creation and restoration processes. The vulnerability stems from unsanitized shell command construction that can allow an attacker to escalate privileges and lead to full compromise of the target device.

Description

Dokploy is an open-source Platform as a Service solution for deploying applications and databases on self-hosted servers. Dokploy allows authenticated users to create and schedule database backups and restore previously created backups. These backup operations are executed by the Dokploy process, which runs with root privileges by default.

Dokploy is vulnerable to OS command injection in its database backup creation and restoration functionality due to insufficient sanitization of user-controlled input before it is incorporated into shell commands. The vulnerable backup functionality constructs database-specific shell commands that directly interpolate a user-supplied database name, while the restore functionality incorporates a user-supplied backupFile value into a shell command. Both operations ultimately pass the resulting command to a shell execution helper that invokes /bin/bash as a child of the Dokploy process, without shell escaping or restrictions on shell metacharacters.

The affected parameters are exposed through tRPC procedures that only validate that the supplied values are non-empty strings. Consequently, authenticated users with permission to perform database backups can supply shell metacharacters that are interpreted by /bin/bash, resulting in arbitrary command execution on the Dokploy host with the root privileges of the Dokploy server process.

Impact

An attacker with authenticated Dokploy account with backup permission (granted by default for database services) can execute arbitrary commands as root (default configuration) on the Dokploy host. Successful exploitation provides full control of the host, including persistent read/write access to the target server's filesystem and the ability to steal private credentials stored for other tenants managed by the same Dokploy instance.
The vulnerability affects all five database types supported by Dokploy: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and LibSQL. Exploitation was confirmed against versions 0.29.8 and 0.29.11, as well as commit 24b02f5 on the canary branch available on GitHub.

Solution

Unfortunately, Dokploy could not be reached to coordinate this vulnerability; however, the issue has been patched in Dokploy versions 0.29.13 and beyond. The CERT/CC recommends users update immediately. Database administrators or general operators unable to update should mitigate potential attacks by turning off default backup permissions, and restricting these permissions only to necessary users and roles.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Muhammadjon Ahmadjonov for reporting this vulnerability. This document was written by Alex Lewis.

Vendor Information

References

• https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy/blob/canary/packages/server/src/utils/backups/utils.ts
• https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy/blob/canary/packages/server/src/utils/restore/libsql.ts
• https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy/blob/canary/packages/server/src/utils/process/execAsync.ts
• https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy/commit/ccd2e83c5