/Vulnerability Library

Crawl4AI < 0.8.7 - Hardcoded JWT Signing Key Authentication Bypass

CVE-2026-56265
Verified

Description

Crawl4AI Docker API server versions before 0.8.7 ship with a hardcoded default JWT signing key ("mysecret") used to sign and verify HS256 authentication tokens. Because the key is identical across every deployment where SECRET_KEY has not been overridden, an unauthenticated attacker can forge a valid Bearer token and use it to access every JWT-protected API endpoint (/md, /html, /screenshot, /pdf, /execute_js, /crawl, /ask).

Severity

Critical

CVSS Score

9.8

Exploit Probability

3%

Affected Product

crawl4ai

Published Date

August 3, 2026

Template Author

prithvee07

CVE-2026-56265.yaml
9.8Score

CVSS Metrics

CVSS Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVE ID:
cve-2026-56265
CWE ID:
cwe-798

References

https://github.com/unclecode/crawl4ai/security/advisories/GHSA-365w-hqf6-vxfghttps://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/crawl4ai-authentication-bypass-via-hardcoded-jwt-signing-keyhttps://github.com/unclecode/crawl4aihttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-56265

Remediation Steps

Upgrade Crawl4AI to version 0.8.7 or later, which removes the hardcoded default signing key, rejects known weak secrets, and auto-generates an ephemeral key when JWT authentication is enabled without an explicit SECRET_KEY. As a workaround, set the SECRET_KEY environment variable to a strong random value.