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High

vLLM is vulnerable to timing attack at bearer auth

  • Disclosed: 07.10.2025
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 15:17

Summary

The API key support in vLLM performed validation using a method that was vulnerable to a timing attack. This could potentially allow an attacker to discover a valid API key using an approach more efficient than brute force.

Details

https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/blob/4b946d693e0af15740e9ca9c0e059d5f333b1083/vllm/entrypoints/openai/api_server.py#L1270-L1274

API key validation used a string comparison that will take longer the more characters the provided API key gets correct. Data analysis across many attempts can allow an attacker to determine when it finds the next correct character in the key sequence.

Impact

Deployments relying on vLLM's built-in API key validation are vulnerable to authentication bypass using this technique.

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Python (PyPI) vllm < 0.11.0 0.11.0

References

CVSS score 7.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-385
Platform
Python (PyPI)
Package
vllm
Disclosed
07.10.2025
Updated
11.10.2026 15:17

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2026-2026 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-wr9h-g72x-mwhm - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: vllm

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Python (PyPI)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (94) in the archive
Total entries
94
First → latest
09.2024 10.2026
Without a fix
5
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 9
  • High 23
  • Medium 47
  • Low 4
  • Unrated 11

Disclosures per year

Severity:
  1. A flaw has been found in vllm-project vLLM up to 0.26.0. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the file rust/src/parser/src/unified/gemma4.rs of the component Gemma4UnifiedParser. Executing a man
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-103241 < 0.27.0 0.27.0
  2. vLLM versions 0.22.0 through 0.23.0 fail to validate stop_token_ids against vocabulary bounds in Rust HTTP and gRPC frontends, allowing out-of-vocabulary token IDs to reach MinTokensLogitsProcessor. A
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-100652 >= 0.22.0, < 0.24.0 0.24.0
  3. vLLM has Remote DoS via Invalid Recovered Token Reinjection
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-54234 >= 0.17.1, < 0.24.0 0.24.0
  4. vLLM: ReDoS via structured_outputs.regex compiled without timeout in xgrammar and outlines backends
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-55574 < 0.24.0 0.24.0
  5. vLLM denial of service via prompt embeds on M-RoPE models
    High CVE-2026-55514 >= 0.12.0, < 0.24.0 0.24.0
  6. vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models (LLMs). Prior to 0.22.1, the vLLM Dockerfile is vulnerable to a dependency confusion attack through the flashinfer-jit-cache package.
    High · 8.8 CVE-2026-54232 < 0.22.1 0.22.1
  7. vLLM: OpenAI auth bypass
    Critical · 9.1 CVE-2026-48746 >= 0.3.0, < 0.22.0 0.22.0
  8. vLLM: Security Check Bypass via assert Statement in Activation Function Loading Allows Arbitrary Code Execution
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-41523 < 0.22.0 0.22.0
  9. vLLM versions 0.8.0 and later are vulnerable to an Out-of-Memory (OOM) Denial of Service (DoS) attack due to unbounded frame count processing in the `VideoMediaIO.load_base64()` method. When processin
    High · 7.5 CVE-2026-5497 >= 0.8.0, < 0.19.0 0.19.0
  10. vLLM has Hardcoded Trust Override in Model Files Enables RCE Despite Explicit User Opt-Out
    High · 8.8 CVE-2026-27893 >= 0.10.1, < 0.18.0 0.18.0
  11. vLLM has RCE In Video Processing
    Critical · 9.8 CVE-2026-22778 >= 0.8.3, < 0.14.1 0.14.1
  12. vLLM vulnerable to Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) through MediaConnector
    High · 7.1 CVE-2026-24779 < 0.14.1 0.14.1
  13. vLLM affected by RCE via auto_map dynamic module loading during model initialization
    High · 8.8 CVE-2026-22807 >= 0.10.1, < 0.14.0 0.14.0
  14. vLLM introduced enhanced protection for CVE-2025-62164
    High · 8.8 CVE-2026-56340 >= 0.10.2, < 0.13.0 0.13.0
  15. vLLM vulnerable to remote code execution via transformers_utils/get_config
    High · 7.1 CVE-2025-66448 < 0.11.1 0.11.1
  16. vLLM vulnerable to DoS with incorrect shape of multimodal embedding inputs
    High · 6.5 CVE-2025-62372 >= 0.5.5, < 0.11.1 0.11.1
  17. vLLM deserialization vulnerability leading to DoS and potential RCE
    High · 8.8 CVE-2025-62164 >= 0.10.2, < 0.11.1 0.11.1
  18. vLLM is vulnerable to Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) through `MediaConnector` class
    High · 7.1 CVE-2025-6242 >= 0.5.0, < 0.11.0 0.11.0
  19. vLLM is vulnerable to timing attack at bearer auth this entry
    High · 7.5 CVE-2025-59425 < 0.11.0 0.11.0
  20. vLLM has remote code execution vulnerability in the tool call parser for Qwen3-Coder
    High · 8.8 CVE-2025-9141 >= 0.10.0, < 0.10.1.1 0.10.1.1
Show more (12) Showing 20 of 32

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