VulnerabilityPublished 29 May 2025

CVE-2025-46570: vllm · Timing Side Channel

Affects vllmSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 2.6 Low : upgrade to 0.9.0 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

2.6Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 0.9.0

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: Low
Integrity: None
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 29 May 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade vllm-project/vllm to 0.9.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubvllm-project/vllm`pkg:github/vllm-project/vllm`Other threats	Affected <0.9.0	Fixed in 0.9.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

European organizations should upgrade all vLLM deployments to version 0.9.0 or later to eliminate this timing side-channel vulnerability. For environments where immediate upgrading is not feasible, consider implementing network-level controls to restrict access to the inference service, limiting exposure to untrusted users. Monitoring and logging of inference request patterns may help detect anomalous probing attempts exploiting timing differences. Additionally, organizations can introduce artificial delays or jitter in response times to obscure timing discrepancies, though this may impact performance. For highly sensitive use cases, isolating inference workloads and employing strict authentication and authorization mechanisms can further reduce risk. Finally, maintain awareness of vendor updates and security advisories related to vLLM and similar LLM serving engines.

Description

vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models (LLMs). Prior to version 0.9.0, when a new prompt is processed, if the PageAttention mechanism finds a matching prefix chunk, the prefill process speeds up, which is reflected in the TTFT (Time to First Token). These timing differences caused by matching chunks are significant enough to be recognized and exploited. This issue has been patched in version 0.9.0.

Impact

For European organizations utilizing vLLM versions prior to 0.9.0, this vulnerability could potentially allow attackers to glean partial information about the prompts being processed by observing timing differences in responses. While the confidentiality impact is low, in sensitive environments where prompt content may include proprietary, personal, or confidential data, even limited leakage could be problematic. The vulnerability does not affect integrity or availability, so operational disruption or data manipulation risks are minimal. However, organizations deploying LLM inference services in sectors such as finance, healthcare, or government where data sensitivity is high should consider this risk seriously. The requirement for user interaction and low privileges reduces the likelihood of widespread exploitation, but targeted attacks remain possible, especially in multi-tenant or cloud-hosted inference environments common in Europe.

CWE-208Observable Timing Discrepancy (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
Two separate operations in a product require different amounts of time to complete, in a way that is observable to an actor and reveals security-relevant information about the state of the product, such as whether a particular operation was successful or not.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Error Handling (opens in a new tab)
Logging (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.3.4 (opens in a new tab)
V14.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V7.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Cross-Domain Search Timing (opens in a new tab)
Application Fingerprinting (opens in a new tab)
System Footprinting (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 7 Jul 2025, 23:09 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-208

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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