vllm-project
Multiple Products
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models (LLMs). From 0.8.3 to before 0.14.1, when an invalid image is sent to vLLM's multimo...
2026-02-03
Description
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models (LLMs). From 0.8.3 to before 0.14.1, when an invalid image is sent to vLLM's multimodal endpoint, PIL throws an error. vLLM returns this error to the client, leaking a heap address. With this leak, we reduce ASLR from 4 billion guesses to ~8 guesses. This vulnerability can be chained a heap overflow with JPEG2000 decoder in OpenCV/FFmpeg to achieve remote code execution. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.14.1.
AI Analyst Comment
Remediation
Update vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models Multiple Products to the latest version. Monitor for exploitation attempts and review access logs.
Description Summary:
A vulnerability in the vLLM inference engine allows for potential denial-of-service attacks due to inefficient regular expression complexity.
Executive Summary:
The vLLM inference engine is vulnerable to an algorithmic complexity attack that could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to cause a denial-of-service condition.
Vulnerability Details
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-55574
Affected Software: vLLM Project vLLM
Affected Versions: < 0.24.0
Vulnerability: This vulnerability (CWE-1333) stems from inefficient regular expression complexity within the vLLM engine. An unauthenticated attacker can supply specially crafted inputs that trigger catastrophic backtracking, leading to high resource consumption and denial-of-service.
Business Impact
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to significant system instability and denial-of-service, rendering the inference engine unresponsive to legitimate requests. Given the CVSS score of 8.7, this represents a high-severity risk to business continuity, particularly for organizations relying on vLLM for high-throughput AI workloads.
Remediation Plan
Immediate Action: Upgrade to vLLM version 0.24.0 or later immediately to resolve the regular expression inefficiency.
Proactive Monitoring: Monitor server CPU and memory utilization for sudden, unexplained spikes that correlate with incoming inference requests.
Compensating Controls: Implement strict input validation or request rate limiting at the API gateway layer to prevent the submission of malicious, overly complex input strings.
Exploitation Status
Public Exploit Available: false
Analyst Notes: As of July 7, 2026, there is no public information indicating active exploitation of this vulnerability. However, due to the nature of the flaw, the potential for exploitation is high.
Analyst Recommendation
This vulnerability presents a clear risk to the availability of AI serving infrastructure. Administrators must prioritize updating to version 0.24.0 to eliminate the underlying regex vulnerability. Prompt patching is essential to prevent potential service disruptions.