Affected: MervinPraison PraisonAIAgents
PraisonAIAgents is a multi-agent teams system. Prior to 1.5.128, the execute_command function in shell_tools.py calls os.path.expandvars() on every command argument at line 64, manually re-implementing shell-level environment variable expansion despite using shell=False (line 88) for security. This allows exfiltration of secrets stored in environment variables (database credentials, API keys, cloud access keys). The approval system displays the unexpanded $VAR references to human reviewers, creating a deceptive approval where the displayed command differs from what actually executes. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.5.128.
Affected: PyPI: praisonaiagents
## Summary
The `execute_command` function in `shell_tools.py` calls `os.path.expandvars()` on every command argument at line 64, manually re-implementing shell-level environment variable expansion despite using `shell=False` (line 88) for security. This allows exfiltration of secrets stored in environment variables (database credentials, API keys, cloud access keys). The approval system displays the **unexpanded** `$VAR` references to human reviewers, creating a deceptive approval where the displayed command differs from what actually executes.
## Details
The vulnerable code is in `src/praisonai-agents/praisonaiagents/tools/shell_tools.py`:
```python # Line 60: command is split command = shlex.split(command)
# Lines 62-64: VULNERABLE — expands ALL env vars in every argument # Expand tilde and environment variables in command arguments # (shell=False means the shell won't do this for us) command = [os.path.expanduser(os.path.expandvars(arg)) for arg in command]
# Line 88: shell=False is supposed to prevent shell feature access process = subprocess.Popen( command, ... shell=False, # Always use shell=False for security ) ```
The security problem is a disconnect between the approval display and actual execution:
1. The LLM generates a tool call: `execute_command(command="cat $DATABASE_URL")` 2. `_check_tool_approval_sync` in `tool_execution.py:558` passes `{"command": "cat $DATABASE_URL"}` to the approval backend 3. `ConsoleBackend` (backends.py:81-85) displ…