GitHub Security Advisory: GHSA-c67j-w6g6-q2cm
Package: langchain-core (PIP)
Severity: CRITICAL (CVSS 9.3)
CWE: CWE-502: Deserialization of Untrusted Data
Vulnerable versions: < 0.3.81
Patched in: 0.3.81

Summary: LangChain serialization injection vulnerability enables secret extraction in dumps/loads APIs

Details:
## Summary

A serialization injection vulnerability exists in LangChain's `dumps()` and `dumpd()` functions. The functions do not escape dictionaries with `'lc'` keys when serializing free-form dictionaries. The `'lc'` key is used internally by LangChain to mark serialized objects. When user-controlled data contains this key structure, it is treated as a legitimate LangChain object during deserialization rather than plain user data.

### Attack surface

The core vulnerability was in `dumps()` and `dumpd()`: these functions failed to escape user-controlled dictionaries containing `'lc'` keys. When this unescaped data was later deserialized via `load()` or `loads()`, the injected structures were treated as legitimate LangChain objects rather than plain user data.

This escaping bug enabled several attack vectors:

1. **Injection via user data**: Malicious LangChain object structures could be injected through user-controlled fields like `metadata`, `additional_kwargs`, or `response_metadata`
2. **Class instantiation within trusted namespaces**: Injected manifests could instantiate any `Serializable` subclass, but only within the pre-approved trusted namespaces (`langchain_core`, `langchain`, `langchain_community`). This includes classes with side effects in `__init__` (network calls, file operations, etc.). Note that namespace validation was already enforced before this patch, so arbitrary classes outside these trusted namespaces could not be instantiated.

### Security hardening

This patch fixes the escaping bug in `dumps()` and `dumpd()` and introduces new restrictive defaults in `load()` and `loads()`: allowlist enforcement via `allowed_objects="core"` (restricted to [serialization mappings](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain/blob/master/libs/core/langchain_core/load/mapping.py)), `secrets_from_env` changed from `True` to `False`, and default Jinja2 template blocking via `init_validator`. These are breaking changes for some use cases.

## Who is affected?

Applications are vulnerable if they:

1. **Use `astream_events(version="v1")`** — The v1 implementation internally uses vulnerable serialization. Note: `astream_events(version="v2")` is not vulnerable.
2. **Use `Runnable.astream_log()`** — This method internally uses vulnerable serialization for streaming outputs.
3. **Call `dumps()` or `dumpd()` on untrusted data, then deserialize with `load()` or `loads()`** — Trusting your own serialization output makes you vulnerable if user-controlled data (e.g., from LLM responses, metadata fields, or user inputs) contains `'lc'` key structures.
4. **Deserialize untrusted data with `load()` or `loads()`** — Directly deserializing untrusted data that may contain injected `'lc'` structures.
5. **Use `RunnableWithMessageHistory`** — Internal serialization in message history handling.
6. **Use `InMemoryVectorStore.load()`** to deserialize untrusted documents.
7. Load untrusted generations from cache using **`langchain-community` caches**.
8. Load untr