GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.3) CWE-862 vulnerability in open-webui. A fix is available for open-webui — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Open WebUI: Users denied the image-generation permission can still generate images via chat completions
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv.
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.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 376,715 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
open-webuiReal-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
Summary
An authenticated user whose features.image_generation permission has been revoked can still make the server generate images by sending the feature flag in a chat-completion request. The chat pipeline took the client-supplied features object at face value and never re-checked the permission that the direct image routes enforce, so the denial applied to the UI affordance but not to the server-side generation path.
Preconditions
Image generation must be enabled and a provider configured by the administrator (ENABLE_IMAGE_GENERATION is off by default). The per-user permission defaults to granted, so only deployments where an administrator explicitly revoked it for some users are affected. On 0.10.0 and later the caller must also set params.function_calling to legacy; on 0.9.x and earlier the legacy mode was the default, so no special parameter was needed. Deployments on native function calling are unaffected, since that path checks the permission before registering the image tools.
Impact
A user the administrator has explicitly denied image generation can consume the operator's configured provider through the chat API, spending the operator's API credits and provider quota and writing generated files to the operator's storage. Where an image is present in the conversation and image editing is enabled, the same handler reaches the image-edit provider as well. No provider credentials are exposed, and no other user's data is reachable.
Fix
Fixed in 897d69a (#26703). The legacy chat-features block now re-checks features.image_generation against the caller's permissions before invoking the image handler, matching the check the direct image routes and the native function-calling path already performed.
Root cause
The chat-completions endpoint stored the request's features object into request metadata, and process_chat_payload in the chat middleware dispatched to the image handler purely on the truthiness of that client-supplied flag. Permission enforcement lived on the two surfaces that were reached from the UI, the direct /images/generations and /images/edit routes and the native function-calling tool registration, and was simply absent on the legacy chat path. The flag was treated as a statement of user intent, which it is, rather than as an authorization decision, which the handler behind it made it.
Credits
@DavidCarliez, for identifying that the chat pipeline honours the client-supplied image-generation feature flag without re-checking the permission.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | open-webui | ≥ 0.7.0&&< 0.11.0 | 0.11.0pip install --upgrade 'open-webui==0.11.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for open-webui, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update open-webui to 0.11.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-g423-grf7-98rv across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.