VulnerabilityPublished 28 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-115911: vLLM · DoS via unbounded chat_template Jinja2 rendering exhausts the renderer thread pool

Affects vllmSource GCVE Database

Authoritative record:CVE-2026-115911· Medium 6.5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium : upgrade to 0.32.0 when convenient.

Data as of 28 Oct 2026, 22:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.5Medium

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

Patch: Available – fixed in 0.32.0

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

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

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: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
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: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
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: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 26 Oct 2026
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 to 0.32.0.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
PyPIvllm	Affected >=0.19.0 <0.32.0	Fixed in 0.32.0

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

Description

### Summary vLLM renders chat templates by passing the resolved Jinja2 source to `tokenizer.apply_chat_template()`, which compiles and `.render()`s it in an `ImmutableSandboxedEnvironment`. The sandbox prevents code-execution escapes but imposes **no wall-clock timeout, no output-size cap, and no nested-loop or binop limit**. The render runs in a `ThreadPoolExecutor` whose `max_workers` defaults to **1**, and CPython worker threads cannot be interrupted. An authenticated API client (or a malicious model repo loaded with `trust_remote_code=False`) can therefore submit a single short template and permanently wedge **all** chat-style endpoints (`/v1/chat/completions`, `/v1/responses`, `/tokenize`, `/pooling`-chat, `/invocations`-chat) for every tenant until the process is restarted. A string-multiplication variant instead OOM-kills the API-server process. Because of a separately-reported (GHSA-jmjw-q4x3-hmc2) gate omission on `/v1/responses`, the remote authenticated attacker vector works in **default `vllm serve` configuration** with no operator opt-in. ### Impact A single authenticated request of <100 bytes permanently denies all chat-style inference (`/v1/chat/completions`, `/v1/responses`, `/tokenize`, `/pooling`-chat, `/invocations`-chat) to **every tenant** of the API-server replica until the operator restarts the process. The string-multiplication variant OOM-kills the process. In a multi-tenant deployment this is a cross-tenant denial-of-service from any one tenant. From the malicious-model angle, a model repo whose `tokenizer_config.json` carries the hostile template wedges every replica that loads it on the first legitimate chat request, with `trust_remote_code=False`. **Preconditions:** any non-harmony model (`model_type != gpt_oss`); `renderer_num_workers` at its default of 1; for the default-config authenticated API attacker vector, `--chat-template` must be unset (the default because most HF models ship their own). **Blast radius:** API-server process, per replica. Engine/worker processes unaffected by the CPU variant (event loop survives); affected by the memory variant (process OOM). **Persistence:** until process restart. Survives client disconnect. This advisory was fixed in [MR50300](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/pull/50300).

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-770Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #25
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
Requirements
Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
Architecture and Design
Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V13.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V11.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Exponential Data Expansion (opens in a new tab)
Serialized Data Parameter Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Serialized Data with Nested Payloads (opens in a new tab)
Oversized Serialized Data Payloads (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-834Excessive Iteration (opens in a new tab)
Class weakness
The product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

WeaknessesCWE-400, CWE-770, CWE-834

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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