Adclarity Semrush Docker Registry Exposure 2026 05 08

To: security@semrush.com Subject: AdClarity (Semrush subsidiary), HIGH: Docker Registry publicly exposed without auth on 15-node GloboTech cluster, 100 image repos pullable anonymously

Nicholas Michael Kloster / NuClide Research nicholas@nuclide-research.com 2026-05-08

This is an unsolicited good-faith coordinated-disclosure notification under the NuClide Research umbrella (CISA disclosures CVE-2025-4364, ICSA-25-140-11). I’m reaching security@semrush.com because AdClarity does not publish a security.txt or VDP, and Semrush owns and operates the AdClarity platform since 2022.

Executive Summary

A 15-node Docker Registry cluster hosted at GloboTech Communications (Montréal/Laval, Canada) is publicly reachable on port 5000 with no authentication. The registries are load-balanced across all 15 IPs and serve a single shared backend containing 100 AdClarity image repositories. Any anonymous client can list the full catalog via GET /v2/_catalog and pull image manifests and layers.

The exposed repositories span AdClarity’s full operational surface: AI/LLM inference pipelines, captcha-bypass infrastructure, browser automation workers, platform-specific ad extractors (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Meta), internal operations tooling, and content-delivery components. Image layers likely contain baked-in credentials (database connection strings, API keys, third-party service tokens) as is common in containerized deployments that predate secrets-management maturity.

Finding. HIGH: Public Docker Registry (port 5000). No Authentication

Affected hosts:

67.43.236.154 – 67.43.236.158     (GloboTech Montréal)
67.43.236.170 – 67.43.236.174     (GloboTech Montréal)
173.209.62.194 – 173.209.62.198   (GloboTech Laval)

Proof of exposure:

$ curl -s http://67.43.236.154:5000/v2/
{}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Docker-Distribution-Api-Version: registry/2.0
Date: Fri, 08 May 2026 04:57:35 GMT

$ curl -s http://67.43.236.154:5000/v2/_catalog | python3 -c \
  "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(len(d['repositories']), 'repos')"
100 repos

All 15 IPs return 200 OK on GET /v2/ with Docker-Distribution-Api-Version: registry/2.0. The catalog is identical across all nodes. They share a backend registry behind a load balancer.

Selected repository inventory (100 total):

AI / LLM pipelines:

adclarity/hybrid-text2sql-langgraph    ← LLM-driven SQL generation (LangGraph)
adclarity/llm-adex
adclarity/llm-dc-backend
adclarity/chatgpt-adex
adclarity/insights-llm
adclarity/insights-gradio
adclarity/insights-api-service

Captcha-bypass infrastructure:

adclarity/captcha-resolver
adclarity/captcha-resolver-server

Browser automation (17 images):

adclarity/browser-manager-chrome-puppeteer
adclarity/browser-manager-chrome-extensions
adclarity/browser-manager-server
adclarity/jre-11-playwright-chrome
adclarity/jre11-playwright-chrome{90,102,105,127,130}
adclarity/jre11-playwright-edge
adclarity/jdk17-playwright-chrome-rebased-from-jre11

Platform ad extractors (8 images):

adclarity/fb-ads-url-extractor
adclarity/fb-ads-verifier-html
adclarity/fb_ad_verifier
adclarity/google-adex
adclarity/linkedin-adex
adclarity/meta-adex
adclarity/meta-ad-wrapper

Internal operations tooling:

adclarity/opsys-accounts
adclarity/opsys-brandtags
adclarity/opsys-changeset
adclarity/ops-ui
adclarity/opsui

Additional core infrastructure:

adclarity/api-gateway
adclarity/crawler
adclarity/edex-{activator,analyzer,capturer,crawler,deliverer,extractor,janitor,utilizer}
adclarity/cookie-factory
adclarity/creative-classifier
adclarity/creatives-deduplicator
adclarity/elastic-indexer
adclarity/data-distributor
adclarity/database-mediator
... (full list of 100 available on request)

NuClide research scope discipline: We enumerated the catalog via GET /v2/_catalog only. We did not pull image manifests, layer blobs, or extract any content from image layers. The catalog listing alone is sufficient proof of the exposure class. Impact assessment regarding baked-in secrets is based on industry-standard pattern recognition for containerized workloads.

Impact

Intellectual property / source code: Image layers contain compiled Java .jar files and Python/Node source (visible from image names like adclarity/database-mediator.jar, adclarity/display_downloader.jar). An attacker pulling these layers obtains AdClarity’s proprietary crawler architecture.

Operational security: The captcha-resolver and browser-manager stacks are operationally sensitive. Public access to these images enables adversaries to reverse-engineer bypasses, replicate infrastructure, or identify fingerprinting vectors AdClarity uses. Undermining the platform’s competitive and technical moat.

Credential exposure: Industry-standard practice for containerized workloads built at this stack age (Java/JRE 11 era images) is to bake environment variables, including DB credentials, API keys, and third-party platform tokens, into image layers. We did not verify this, but your security team should treat every image as potentially containing live credentials until proven otherwise by layer inspection.

Compliance: Depending on what customer query data flows through LLM pipeline images (llm-dc-backend, chatgpt-adex), GDPR/CCPA obligations may apply to the exposure window.

Recommendations

Immediate (within hours):

1. Enable registry authentication. Docker Registry HTTP API v2 supports htpasswd and token-based auth. Add an authentication middleware (or migrate behind an authenticated registry service like Artifact Registry, ECR, or Harbor) so anonymous catalog enumeration is impossible.
2. Firewall port 5000 from the public internet. If this cluster is intended for internal/CI use only, a firewall rule allowing only office/VPN CIDRs eliminates the attack surface entirely.

Within a few days: 3. Audit image layers for baked-in secrets. Use docker history, dive, or a secrets scanner (truffleHog, gitleaks) on each image to identify any credentials embedded in layers. Rotate any found. 4. Review Shodan/Censys exposure timeline to determine how long the registry has been indexed and assess whether unauthorized pulls occurred.

Evidence Preservation

A complete evidence bundle is preserved locally with server-asserted Date: headers from every HTTP capture, SHA-256 manifest, and OpenTimestamps receipt anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain. The bundle is held privately pending your remediation; we are not publishing it. Available on request via secure channel.

IOCs

Reference

• Docker Registry HTTP API v2 Authentication spec: https://distribution.github.io/distribution/spec/api/
• Docker Registry token authentication: https://distribution.github.io/distribution/spec/auth/token/
• OWASP Docker Security Cheat Sheet: https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Docker_Security_Cheat_Sheet.html

Regards, Nicholas Michael Kloster / NuClide Research nicholas@nuclide-research.com https://nuclide-research.com AI-LLM-Infrastructure-OSINT