Is CVE-2026-56265 exploited in the wild?

No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-56265 being exploited in the wild.

How severe is CVE-2026-56265?

Critical severity, with a CVSS score of 9.8, published 21 June 2026.

Is there a fix for CVE-2026-56265?

A patch was published on 2026-06-01: Fix released in v0.8.7 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.

How is CVE-2026-56265 attacked?

It is attacked over the network, in a software library.

Am I affected by CVE-2026-56265?

Check whether you run crawl4ai (PyPI) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

CVE-2026-56265: Crawl4AI hardcoded JWT signing key in Docker API server

CVE-2026-56265 · Severity: critical · CVSS 9.8 · Published 2026-06-21

Crawl4AI is a web scraping and content extraction tool that can be deployed as a Docker service to crawl websites and extract data. A hardcoded default JWT signing key ("mysecret") in the Docker API server allows attackers to forge authentication tokens for any user without credentials, gaining full access to all protected API endpoints and functionality. This could enable attackers to extract sensitive data, modify configurations, or abuse the crawling service.

Technologies: crawl4ai (PyPI). Vendors: PyPI.

Quick answers

Is CVE-2026-56265 exploited in the wild?: No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-56265 being exploited in the wild.
How severe is CVE-2026-56265?: Critical severity, with a CVSS score of 9.8, published 21 June 2026.
Which products and versions are affected?: crawl4ai (PyPI) < 0.8.7.
Is there a fix for CVE-2026-56265?: A patch was published on 2026-06-01: Fix released in v0.8.7 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
How is CVE-2026-56265 attacked?: It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
Am I affected by CVE-2026-56265?: Check whether you run crawl4ai (PyPI) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

Technical details

The vulnerability stems from a hardcoded JWT signing secret ("mysecret") embedded in the public source code of Crawl4AI's Docker API server (CWE-798: Use of Hard-coded Credentials). The JWT token generation mechanism does not validate the strength or uniqueness of the secret key, allowing any attacker with knowledge of the default key to cryptographically sign valid authentication tokens impersonating any user. The attack requires network access to the Docker API endpoint and no prior authentication or user interaction. Once an attacker forges a valid JWT token using the default key, they can access all protected endpoints including data extraction, configuration modification, and potentially destructive operations. The vulnerability was fixed in version 0.8.7 by removing the default key value and implementing startup validation that rejects weak secrets, with auto-generation of an ephemeral key when JWT is enabled but no key is configured.

Affected products

unclecode Crawl4AI < 0.8.7

Identifiers

CVE-2026-56265
GHSA-8qrg-7j2f-rf2h

Timeline

2026-06-21: disclosed
2026-06-01: patched: Fix released in v0.8.7

References

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