Choosing and deploying AI tools has become common for enterprises, but security risks continue to grow alongside adoption.
This week, cybersecurity startup Zafran revealed serious security flaws in Chainlit, a popular open-source AI framework used to build chatbots and AI applications.
These vulnerabilities could allow attackers to steal sensitive data and even take over enterprise cloud environments.
Chainlit is widely used across industries. It recorded around 700,000 monthly downloads and over 5 million downloads in 2025.
The framework integrates with major platforms such as OpenAI, LangChain, Amazon Bedrock, and LlamaIndex, making the impact of these flaws potentially widespread.

AI Security Vulnerabilities: How the Chainlit Vulnerabilities Work
Zafran identified two critical vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2026-22218 and CVE-2026-22219, affecting Chainlit’s Python package.
CVE-2026-22218: Arbitrary File Read
This flaw allows an authenticated attacker to read sensitive files from the server.
What attackers can do:
- Send a custom element with a manipulated file path
- Force the server to copy internal files into their session
- Access environment variables and configuration files
Exposed data may include:
- API keys
- Cloud credentials
- Internal IP addresses
- System file paths
Also read about: Chainlit Vulnerabilities Expose Enterprise Cloud Risks
Cloud Takeover Risk and Patch Details
CVE-2026-22219: Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
This issue appears when Chainlit uses the SQLAlchemy data layer.
Attackers can:
- Inject a user-controlled URL
- Force the server to make internal HTTP requests
- Access cloud metadata services and internal APIs
Zafran’s CTO, Ben Seri, said the flaws are easy to exploit. Attackers only need to change a single value to access files or internal services.
When combined, these two bugs can lead to full account takeover, especially in cloud environments like AWS.
Impact and Fix
- Affected sectors include finance, energy, and universities
- No active attacks seen yet
- Chainlit version 2.9.4, released on December 24, 2025, fixes both issues
- Zafran also released temporary WAF rules for unpatched systems
Organizations using Chainlit should update immediately to avoid data theft and cloud compromise.
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