CVE-2026-42271
CVE-2026-42271 is a CWE-77 vulnerability in litellm. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-06-08) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-42271 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
LiteLLM: Authenticated command execution via MCP stdio test endpoints
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-06-08. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-06-22.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2026-42271.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Real-World Exposure
litellmReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
LiteLLM is a proxy server (AI Gateway) to call LLM APIs in OpenAI (or native) format. From version 1.74.2 to before version 1.83.7, two endpoints used to preview an MCP server before saving it — POST /mcp-rest/test/connection and POST /mcp-rest/test/tools/list — accepted a full server configuration in the request body, including the command, args, and env fields used by the stdio transport. When called with a stdio configuration, the endpoints attempted to connect, which spawned the supplied command as a subprocess on the proxy host with the privileges of the proxy process. The endpoints were gated only by a valid proxy API key, with no role check. Any authenticated user — including holders of low-privilege internal-user keys — could therefore run arbitrary commands on the host. This issue has been patched in version 1.83.7.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | litellm | ≥ 1.74.2&&< 1.83.7 | 1.83.7 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for litellm. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update litellm to 1.83.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-42271 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-42271 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-42271. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This is an Important flaw affecting LiteLLM, as deployed in Red Hat products like Ansible Automation Platform and OpenShift AI. Authenticated users, even with low-privilege API keys, can execute arbitrary commands on the proxy host. This is due to insufficient role checks on specific endpoints that accept server…
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-42271 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-42271 across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.