How severe is GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj has a CVSS score of 8.3/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj affects the following packages: llamafactory (PyPI). Ecosystems affected: PyPI.

How do I fix GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

No patched version of llamafactory has shipped for GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.

How do I detect GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj in my PyPI dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for llamafactory. 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.

How do I mitigate GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 1.0%, placing it in the 59th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj?

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj is classified as Code Injection (CWE-94), Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502). These weakness types describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation. This is a high-impact weakness class that often enables remote code execution or data exposure.

When was GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj was published on June 27, 2025 and was last updated on June 27, 2025. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

🐍 PyPI

GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj

HIGH

LLaMA-Factory allows Code Injection through improper vhead_file safeguards

Also known asCVE-2025-53002

Published

Jun 27, 2025

Updated

Jun 27, 2025

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

None yet

Exploits

None indexed

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

1.0%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk59th percentile-3.19%

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.

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

🐍llamafactory

Real-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

A critical remote code execution vulnerability was discovered during the Llama Factory training process. This vulnerability arises because the vhead_file is loaded without proper safeguards, allowing malicious attackers to execute arbitrary malicious code on the host system simply by passing a malicious Checkpoint path parameter through the WebUI interface. The attack is stealthy, as the victim remains unaware of the exploitation. The root cause is that the vhead_file argument is loaded without the secure parameter weights_only=True.

Note: In torch versions <2.6, the default setting is weights_only=False, and Llama Factory's setup.py only requires torch>=2.0.0.

Affected Version

Llama Factory versions <=0.9.3 are affected by this vulnerability.

Details

In LLaMA Factory's WebUI, when a user sets the Checkpoint path, it modifies the adapter_name_or_path parameter passed to the training process. code in src/llamafactory/webui/runner.py
<img width="1040" alt="image-1" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c8bc79e4-ce7d-43c9-b0fd-e37c235e6585" />
The adapter_name_or_path passed to the training process is then used in src/llamafactory/model/model_utils/valuehead.py to fetch the corresponding value_head.bin file from Hugging Face. This file is subsequently loaded via torch.load() without the security parameter weights_only=True being set, resulting in remote code execution. code in src/llamafactory/model/model_utils/valuehead.py
<img width="1181" alt="image-2" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6edbe694-0c60-4a54-bfb3-5e1042c9230d" />

PoC

Steps to Reproduce

Deploy llama factory.
Remote attack through the WebUI interface
1. Configure Model name and Model path correctly. For demonstration purposes, we'll use a small model llamafactory/tiny-random-Llama-3 to accelerate model loading.
2. Set Finetuning method to LoRA and Train Stage to Reward Modeling. The vulnerability is specifically triggered during the Reward Modeling training stage.
3. Input a malicious Hugging Face path in Checkpoint path – here we use paulinsider/llamafactory-hack. This repository(https://huggingface.co/paulinsider/llamafactory-hack/tree/main ) contains a malicious value_head.bin file. The generation method for this file is as follows (it can execute arbitrary attack commands; for demonstration, we configured it to create a HACKED! folder).
4. Click Start to begin training. After a brief wait, a HACKED! folder will be created on the server. Note that arbitrary malicious code could be executed through this method.

The video demonstration of the vulnerability exploitation is available at the Google Drive Link

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability allows remote attackers to:

Execute arbitrary malicious code / OS commands on the server.
Potentially compromise sensitive data or escalate privileges.
Deploy malware or create persistent backdoors in the system. This significantly increases the risk of data breaches and operational disruption.

Affected Packages

1 total

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🐍PyPI	`llamafactory`	all versions	No fix

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for llamafactory. 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.
Remediation status
No patched version of llamafactory has shipped for GHSA-xj56-p8mm-qmxj yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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-xj56-p8mm-qmxj 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-xj56-p8mm-qmxj. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary A critical remote code execution vulnerability was discovered during the Llama Factory training process. This vulnerability arises because the `vhead_file` is loaded without proper safeguards, allowing malicious attackers to execute arbitrary malicious code on the host system simply by passing a malicious `Checkpoint path` parameter through the `WebUI` interface. The attack is stealthy, as the victim remains unaware of the exploitation. The root cause is that the `vhead_file` argument is loaded without the secure parameter `weights_only=True`. Note: In torch versions <2.6, the def

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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