ericblackgachara/surrealml-panic-dos-poc

SurrealML — Multiple Panic-on-Parse DoS (3 Bugs)

Target

Field	Value
Repository	surrealdb/surrealml
Commit	152ac2d508f1bae9ee62c46b7d211d80e40a6425 (latest)
CWE	CWE-248 (Uncaught Exception) / CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation)
CVSS 3.1	7.5 High — AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Expected payout	$1,500
Platform	huntr.com — Model File Formats board

Three Confirmed Panic Paths

Bug	File	Line	Trigger	Malicious field
A	input_dims.rs	34	parse::<i32>().unwrap()	input_dims = "abc"
B	origin.rs	115	split.next().unwrap() → None	origin = "noarrow"
C	output.rs	73	NormaliserType::from_string().unwrap()	output = "name=>badnorm(0,1)"

All three: tiny crafted .surml file (50–66 bytes) → panic crosses FFI boundary → SIGABRT.

Root Cause

Each parser uses .unwrap() on user-controlled data with no error propagation. These panics are unrecoverable across the C FFI boundary used by the Python/database integration.

SurMlFile::from_file() → Header::from_bytes()
  → InputDims::from_string()   input_dims.rs:34  → parse::<i32>().unwrap()  [Bug A]
  → Origin::from_string()      origin.rs:115     → split.next().unwrap()    [Bug B]
  → Output::from_string()      output.rs:73      → from_string().unwrap()   [Bug C]

Reproduction

# Create all three malicious files (50-66 bytes each)
python3 poc_surrealml_panic.py

# Each crashes via:
SurMlFile.load("bug_a_input_dims.surml", Engine.PYTORCH)   # ParseIntError
SurMlFile.load("bug_b_origin.surml", Engine.PYTORCH)       # None unwrap
SurMlFile.load("bug_c_output.surml", Engine.PYTORCH)       # Unknown normaliser

Deliverables

File	Purpose
poc_surrealml_panic.py	Python PoC — creates all 3 malicious files, explains each bug
report.md	Full huntr-formatted report covering all 3 bugs
poc-evidence.html	Self-contained HTML evidence page with terminal output for A, B, C
README.md	This file

Suggested Fix

Replace all three .unwrap() calls with ? or .ok_or_else() to propagate errors as SurrealError instead of panicking.

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Eric Gachara · huntr.com · 2026-05-30