Executive brief
GeoNode, an open-source platform for sharing geospatial data, is vulnerable to a security flaw where authenticated users can force the server to make unauthorized requests to internal systems. By providing a malicious web address during the document upload process, an attacker could potentially access sensitive internal network resources or cloud metadata that are not intended to be public. This could lead to information disclosure or further attacks against the organization's internal infrastructure.
Technical details
A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability exists in GeoNode's document upload functionality. The flaw is located in the handling of the 'doc_url' parameter, which lacks sufficient validation for private IP ranges, loopback addresses, or redirect targets. An authenticated attacker with document upload privileges can provide a malicious URL that forces the server to perform GET requests against internal RFC1918 addresses or cloud provider metadata endpoints (e.g., 169.254.169.254). The fix involves disabling automatic thumbnail generation for remote documents and improving URL validation. Patches are available in versions 4.4.5 and 5.0.2.
Affected products
- GeoNode GeoNode 4.0.0 to 4.4.4, 5.0.0 to 5.0.1
Timeline
- 2026-03-18: patched: Fix merged into master branch
- 2026-03-27: advisory: Release 4.4.5 published
- 2026-03-31: advisory: Release 5.0.2 published
- 2026-04-10: disclosed: CVE published and VulnCheck advisory released
References
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/commit/4a852cfc1da732b10779b5bf5f087c8f02985571
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/commit/9856cb5ab27e33c0adba9274f4cccf6d1f534bd1
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/pull/14058
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/releases/tag/4.4.5
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/releases/tag/5.0.2
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/geonode-ssrf-via-document-upload