Compliance Impact

The vulnerability allows authenticated users with document upload permissions to trigger arbitrary outbound HTTP requests to internal network resources, potentially leading to unauthorized access or information disclosure from internal systems.

Such unauthorized access or information disclosure could impact compliance with common standards and regulations like GDPR or HIPAA, which require protection of sensitive data and internal systems from unauthorized access.

However, the provided information does not explicitly mention the direct impact on compliance with these standards or any regulatory consequences.

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Executive Summary

CVE-2026-39921 is a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability found in GeoNode versions before 4.4.5 and 5.0 before 5.0.2. It allows authenticated users who have document upload permissions to exploit the system by submitting a malicious URL through the doc_url parameter during document upload.

When exploited, this vulnerability causes the server to make arbitrary outbound HTTP requests to URLs specified by the attacker. These URLs can point to internal network targets, loopback addresses, private IP ranges defined by RFC1918, or cloud metadata services.

The vulnerability exists because the server lacks SSRF mitigations such as filtering private IP addresses or validating redirects, allowing attackers to potentially access internal resources that should be protected.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can impact you by allowing attackers with document upload permissions to make the server send unauthorized HTTP requests to internal network resources.

Such unauthorized requests can lead to information disclosure or unauthorized access to internal systems that are normally protected from external access.

Attackers could exploit this to access sensitive internal services, cloud metadata, or other protected resources, potentially compromising the confidentiality and integrity of your internal network.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability involves an SSRF triggered by authenticated users with document upload permissions submitting a malicious URL via the doc_url parameter. Detection would involve monitoring for unusual outbound HTTP requests initiated by the GeoNode server, especially requests to internal IP ranges such as loopback addresses, RFC1918 private IPs, or cloud metadata service endpoints.

Specific commands or detection tools are not provided in the available resources.

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Mitigation Strategies

The immediate mitigation step is to upgrade GeoNode to version 4.4.5 or later if using the 4.x series, or to version 5.0.2 or later if using the 5.x series, as these versions contain fixes addressing this SSRF vulnerability.

Additionally, restricting document upload permissions to trusted users and monitoring outbound HTTP requests from the server can help reduce risk until the upgrade is applied.

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