The Red Agent POV: How it Reasoned its Way to SSRF

2026-06-17 · Source: wiz.io - Www.wiz.io · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity & Data Privacy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems · Depth: Intermediate, medium

Summary

The Red Agent, an AI-driven security testing tool, successfully discovered a critical multi-step Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) to Local File Read vulnerability on a GCP Cloud Run service. Targeting a ".run.app/f" endpoint accepting a "?url=" parameter, the agent executed three runs and 96 requests to bypass a strict GitHub URL validator. It achieved this by constructing a URL that appeared legitimate to the validator (e.g., "https://github.com/{owner}/{repo}/blob/{branch}/{path}") while simultaneously using a double-slash ("//") to anchor an absolute local filesystem path for the backend's file-fetching logic. This allowed the exfiltration of 4,096 bytes of container environment variables, including GCP service account credentials, and 25,000 bytes of application source code from "/var/task/graph_api.py".

Key takeaway

For AI Security Engineers assessing cloud-native applications, this analysis highlights the need to move beyond traditional DAST scanners. You should prioritize testing for sophisticated, logic-driven vulnerabilities that exploit parser differentials, especially in services handling external URLs. Implement robust validation that accounts for how different components parse URLs, and consider adopting adaptive, reasoning-based security tools to uncover non-obvious attack chains like the double-slash absolute path bypass.

Key insights

AI-driven Red Agent found a complex SSRF-to-LFR exploit by reasoning through application-specific behaviors and validator-fetcher parsing differentials.

Principles

• Adaptive reasoning uncovers complex exploits.
• Validator-fetcher parsing differentials are critical.
• Strict URL validation can be bypassed.

Method

The Red Agent operates in runs and iterations, executing parallel attack strategies, reflecting on application behavior, and evolving payloads to sharpen hypotheses and adapt.

In practice

• Inspect URL parsing logic for differentials.
• Test double-slash absolute path bypasses.
• Prioritize GCP metadata server access.

Topics

• Red Agent
• SSRF
• GCP Cloud Run
• Local File Read
• URL Parsing
• AI Security Testing
• Vulnerability Discovery

Code references

• x/y

Best for: AI Security Engineer, MLOps Engineer, AI Engineer

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by wiz.io - Www.wiz.io.