GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-862 vulnerability in open-webui. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Open WebUI: Unauthenticated endpoint can trigger embedding generation (cost/DoS)
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j.
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-m69w-p7m4-585j 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 358,265 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
GET /api/v1/memories/ef is accessible without authentication and executes request.app.state.EMBEDDING_FUNCTION(...). This allows any unauthenticated caller to trigger embedding generation which can lead to direct cost exposure if a paid provider is used.
Code reference: backend/open_webui/routers/memories.py (@router.get("/ef") -> calls request.app.state.EMBEDDING_FUNCTION("hello world")).
Details
GET /api/v1/memories/ef is reachable without authentication and triggers request.app.state.EMBEDDING_FUNCTION("hello world"). This crosses an intended security boundary by allowing unauthenticated users to invoke potentially expensive embedding computation and/or paid upstream embedding APIs.
PoC
- Start Open WebUI in default configuration (no special env hardening; default ENABLE_MEMORIES is true).
- From an unauthenticated client (no cookies/Authorization header), call:
curl -i http://<host>:<port>/api/v1/memories/ef
3. Observe the server performs embedding generation and returns a response like:
- HTTP 200 with JSON containing the result.
How it can be abused / attacker actions:
- Send repeated requests to
/api/v1/memories/efto:- consume CPU/GPU resources (DoS)
- generate sustained outbound usage to embedding providers if configured (cost + rate-limit exhaustion)
- degrade latency/availability for legitimate users
Impact
If embeddings are configured to use paid/remote providers (OpenAI/Azure/etc), an attacker can generate unlimited requests and incur charges.
Resolution
Fixed in commit e5035ea31, first released in v0.8.0 (Feb 2026). The /api/v1/memories/ef route was removed entirely. It was a diagnostic/debug-style endpoint that hard-coded "hello world" through the embedding function without any authentication dependency; there was no legitimate caller that depended on it, so deletion was the cleaner fix than retrofitting auth. Users on >= 0.8.0 are not affected.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | open-webui | all versions | 0.8.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for open-webui. 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 open-webui to 0.8.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j 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 GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j 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 GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j. 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-m69w-p7m4-585j in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-m69w-p7m4-585j across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.