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vLLM CVE-2026-100648

| EUVDEUVD-2026-87742 MEDIUM
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400)
2026-09-26 VulnCheck GHSA-526f-298v-f597
6.9
CVSS 4.0 · Vendor: VulnCheck
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Attack ChainAIDerived

Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain

  1. Access
    Reach vLLM multimodal chat endpoint
  2. Delivery
    Craft oversized audio payload
  3. Exploit
    Submit via chat request
  4. Execution
    Size check bypassed, audio decoded
  5. Impact
    Memory/CPU exhausted, service degraded

Vulnerability Assessment

Weakness
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Resource consumption limits
MITRE ATT&CK

1 technique across 1 tactic: Impact

The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up.

Exploitation Conditions

Requires a reachable vLLM instance (before 0.29.0) exposing the multimodal chat endpoint with audio input handling active - i.e., a deployment serving an audio-capable model or otherwise accepting audio clips in chat requests. Exploitation is unauthenticated (PR:N) and needs no user interaction, but its practical impact is limited by whether the chat endpoint is exposed without an authenticating reverse proxy, request-size limits, or rate limiting, and by the host's memory/CPU headroom; impact is availability-only (VA:L) with no data exposure or code execution.

Impact

This is a genuine but low-severity availability issue, not a high-CVSS-but-hollow finding. The vendor CVSS 4.0 vector (AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L, score 6.9) is internally consistent with the description: network-reachable, low-complexity, unauthenticated (PR:N), and impact confined to a LOW availability effect (VA:L) with no confidentiality or integrity impact - appropriate for a resource-exhaustion bug that degrades rather than crashes. No EPSS score, no CISA KEV listing, and no public exploit were provided, so exploitation status is 'no public exploit identified at time of analysis'; the risk is theoretical/opportunistic rather than actively exploited. The CVSS-4.0 base score of 6.9 (MEDIUM) somewhat overstates the practical danger of a single availability-only DoS whose worst case is transient memory/CPU consumption on one inference process - a mapped CVSS 3.1 with A:L lands nearer 5.3. There is no signal conflict: attack vector, complexity, and privilege metrics all agree with the unauthenticated-network DoS narrative. The main caveat is that real-world impact depends on whether the vLLM chat endpoint is exposed without an upstream authenticating proxy or rate limiter.

Exploit ScenarioDerived

An attacker with network reach to a vLLM server's multimodal chat endpoint submits a chat request referencing an oversized audio clip that exceeds VLLM_MAX_AUDIO_CLIP_FILESIZE_MB. Because the size limit is not enforced before decoding, the server allocates memory and burns CPU decoding the file; repeating this across concurrent requests degrades or exhausts the inference host's resources. No authentication is required and no public exploit code is currently identified.

This Month Plan within 30 days. Why: MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9).
Patch available 0.3% exploitation probability (EPSS)

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AnalysisAIv1 – Sep 26, 2026

Remote denial of service in vLLM versions before 0.29.0 allows unauthenticated clients to bypass the configured multimodal audio clip size limit (VLLM_MAX_AUDIO_CLIP_FILESIZE_MB) by submitting oversized audio through chat endpoints, causing excessive memory and CPU consumption during decoding. The CVSS vector confirms this is remotely reachable with no privileges (PR:N) and no user interaction, but impact is availability-only (VA:L) - there is no data exposure, integrity loss, or code execution. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis, and a vendor-released patch (0.29.0) is available, making this a genuine but low-severity resource-exhaustion issue rather than a high-impact breakout. Exploitability in practice depends on whether the audio-capable chat endpoint is exposed without an authenticating reverse proxy, request-size limits, or rate limiting, and on the host's memory/CPU headroom.

RemediationAI

The primary fix is to upgrade vLLM to 0.29.0 or later, the vendor-released patched version in which the VLLM_MAX_AUDIO_CLIP_FILESIZE_MB limit is properly enforced in the audio decoding path; consult the vendor advisory at https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/security/advisories/GHSA-jcq2-4gch-5qhf and the VulnCheck advisory at https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/vllm-before-0.29.0-uncontrolled-resource-consumption-via-audio-decoding when planning the upgrade. Where an immediate upgrade is not possible, compensating controls should target the amplification path: if audio input is not a required feature, stop serving audio-capable models or reject/ignore audio content parts at the chat endpoint (side effect: loss of multimodal audio functionality for all users); front the vLLM API with a reverse proxy that enforces a strict maximum request body size and request timeout so oversized audio payloads are rejected before decoding (side effect: legitimate large requests, including benign audio or long context payloads, must be tuned to fit the new limit); require authentication at that proxy and apply per-client rate limiting to reduce the volume an unauthenticated attacker can drive (side effect: changes client integration and may throttle legitimate batch workloads); and run the inference process under cgroup memory and CPU quotas and monitor for OOM kills so a single oversized decode cannot exhaust the host (side effect: legitimate large jobs may be throttled or terminated, and crashes degrade availability for co-tenants). Note that these controls reduce blast radius but do not repair the underlying missing limit check, so the 0.29.0 upgrade remains the recommended resolution.

Affected VersionsENISA

vllm 0 <0.29.0

Affected Packages

euvd vllm fix: 0.29.0

Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)

Affects your stack

Affects 1 package in euvd

Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.

Technical ContextAI · show details

vLLM is an open-source high-throughput inference and serving engine for large language models that exposes an OpenAI-compatible HTTP API, including a multimodal chat completions endpoint capable of accepting audio inputs. Audio clips received on that endpoint are decoded server-side by the model's audio processor before inference; the environment variable VLLM_MAX_AUDIO_CLIP_FILESIZE_MB is intended to cap the size of those clips. Per CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption), the enforcement of that limit is missing or incomplete in the audio decoding path in versions prior to 0.29.0, so an attacker-controlled oversized audio payload is decoded rather than rejected, and decoding operations on audio are allocation- and CPU-intensive. The affected product is captured by the CPE cpe:2.3:a:vllm-project:vllm:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*, with EUVD listing affected versions as vLLM 0 up to (but not including) 0.29.0. This is a resource-limit enforcement failure, not a memory-safety bug: there is no buffer overflow, no deserialization gadget, and no path to code execution, which is consistent with the availability-only impact.

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  • Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources

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Severity by source

Vendor (VulnCheck) PRIMARY 6.9 MEDIUM
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
vuln.today AI 5.3 MEDIUM

Unauthenticated low-complexity network request (PR:N/AC:L) triggering pre-check resource consumption with only partial/transient availability impact (A:L) and no confidentiality or integrity effect.

3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
4.0 AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Red Hat 5.3 MEDIUM

Primary rating from Vendor (VulnCheck).

CVSS VectorVendor: VulnCheck

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Vulnerable system: Confidentiality
None
Vulnerable system: Integrity
None
Vulnerable system: Availability
Low
Subsequent system: Confidentiality
None
Subsequent system: Integrity
None
Subsequent system: Availability
None

Lifecycle Timeline

1
Patch available
Sep 26, 2026 - 14:02 EUVD

DescriptionCVE.org

vllm before 0.29.0 fails to enforce VLLM_MAX_AUDIO_CLIP_FILESIZE_MB limit in multimodal chat audio decoding, allowing unauthenticated clients to bypass file size restrictions. Attackers can submit oversized audio files through chat endpoints to consume excessive memory and CPU resources during decoding.

Threat Intelligence Overview

EPSS Score
0.3%
Top 76% exploitable
Prevalence
Medium
widely-adopted open-source LLM inference server, but multimodal audio path narrows footprint
Data Quality
7 sources
Confidence: High

How this decision was reached

The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.

SignalValue
Severity MEDIUM
CISA KEV No
Public POC No
EPSS 0.3%
Patch available Yes
Active threat No
Deciding rule
MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9)
What every action level means
Emergency Immediate action required. Criteria: CRITICAL + in CISA KEV (actively exploited) without patch, OR CRITICAL + EPSS > 30% without patch, OR CRITICAL + active threat signals without patch.
Act Now Prioritize within 24-48h. Criteria: in KEV with patch available, OR CRITICAL + public POC, OR HIGH + EPSS > 10%, OR CRITICAL + active threat, OR any CRITICAL severity.
This Week Schedule remediation this week. Criteria: HIGH severity (CVSS 7.0-8.9). Patch within normal change window.
This Month Plan within 30 days. Criteria: MEDIUM severity (CVSS 4.0-6.9), lower exploitation probability. Include in regular patch cycle.
Monitor Track and reassess. Criteria: LOW severity (CVSS 0.1-3.9), minimal exploitation risk. No immediate action needed.

SSVC AssessmentENISA

SSVC Decision· derived
Scheduled
Exploitation
None
System Exposure· derived
Open
Automatable
Yes
Human Impact· derived
Medium
Technical Impact
Partial

Priority Score

34
Low Medium High Critical
KEV: 0
EPSS: 0
CVSS: +34
PoC: 0
Weaponized: 0
Threat intel: 0
Gov advisory: 0

Attack Technique

Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.

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Vendor StatusVendor

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