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State Persistence Deserialization

🔴 CRITICAL memory proven AVE-2025-0105

· aka: Checkpoint RCE, Unsafe State Reload, Persistence Layer Code Execution

Summary

Agentic frameworks that persist agent state (checkpoints, caches, stores) use unsafe deserialization by default — including pickle fallbacks, msgpack object reconstruction, and JSON constructor modes — enabling arbitrary code execution when the persistence layer is compromised.

Blast Radius

Arbitrary code execution in the agent runtime. Escalation from 'persistence layer write access' to full application compromise, including environment variable exfiltration and lateral movement.

Prerequisites

Agent with persistent state (checkpointer, cache, or store). Attacker with write access to the persistence backend.

Environment

  • Frameworks: LangGraph, smolagents
  • Multi-agent: No
  • Tools required: No
  • Memory required: Yes

Known Defences

  • Strict Serialization Mode — ? layer
  • Persistence Layer Integrity — ? layer
  • Safe-by-Default Serialization — ? layer

🔒 Full defence implementations available through the NAIL SDK.

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