CVE-2025-30165
Published: 06 May 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-30165 is a high-severity Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502) vulnerability in Vllm Vllm. Its CVSS base score is 8.0 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 36.9% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as NLP and Transformers; in the Supply Chain and Deployment risk domain.
Deeper analysis
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models. CVE-2025-30165 is a deserialization vulnerability (CWE-502) that affects only the V0 engine in multi-node deployments that use tensor parallelism across hosts. In this configuration the secondary hosts open a ZeroMQ SUB socket that receives data from an XPUB socket on the primary host and immediately deserializes it with pickle, allowing arbitrary code execution on the receiving host.
An attacker who can reach the SUB socket—either by first compromising the primary vLLM host or by other network-level means such as ARP cache poisoning—can supply a malicious pickle payload that executes code on any secondary host. The vulnerability therefore functions as a lateral-movement vector once an initial foothold exists inside a multi-host V0 deployment.
The vLLM security advisory states that the issue will not be patched because V0 has been disabled by default since version 0.8.0 and the affected multi-host pattern is uncommon. Maintainers instead recommend that organizations using this deployment model keep the cluster on a trusted network; the V1 engine is unaffected.
The associated EPSS score rose from a low baseline to a recorded peak of 0.0131, indicating increased exploitation interest after disclosure.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-13625
Vulnerability details
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models. In a multi-node vLLM deployment using the V0 engine, vLLM uses ZeroMQ for some multi-node communication purposes. The secondary vLLM hosts open a `SUB` ZeroMQ socket and connect to…
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an `XPUB` socket on the primary vLLM host. When data is received on this `SUB` socket, it is deserialized with `pickle`. This is unsafe, as it can be abused to execute code on a remote machine. Since the vulnerability exists in a client that connects to the primary vLLM host, this vulnerability serves as an escalation point. If the primary vLLM host is compromised, this vulnerability could be used to compromise the rest of the hosts in the vLLM deployment. Attackers could also use other means to exploit the vulnerability without requiring access to the primary vLLM host. One example would be the use of ARP cache poisoning to redirect traffic to a malicious endpoint used to deliver a payload with arbitrary code to execute on the target machine. Note that this issue only affects the V0 engine, which has been off by default since v0.8.0. Further, the issue only applies to a deployment using tensor parallelism across multiple hosts, which we do not expect to be a common deployment pattern. Since V0 is has been off by default since v0.8.0 and the fix is fairly invasive, the maintainers of vLLM have decided not to fix this issue. Instead, the maintainers recommend that users ensure their environment is on a secure network in case this pattern is in use. The V1 engine is not affected by this issue.
- CWE(s)
AI Security AnalysisAI
- AI Category
- NLP and Transformers
- Risk Domain
- Supply Chain and Deployment
- OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
- None mapped
- Classification Reason
- Matched keywords: vllm
Related Threats
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Penetration testing supplies malicious serialized objects, detecting unsafe deserialization and supporting corrective actions.
Evaluation of untrusted data handling (deserialization testing) reveals unsafe processing, which the required remediation process addresses.
Untrusted serialized data can be deserialized and observed inside the chamber, blocking gadget-chain exploitation outside the sandbox.
Validates or rejects untrusted serialized data before deserialization occurs.
Identifies and blocks malicious code introduced through deserialization of untrusted data at system boundaries.
Integrity verification of serialized information can detect tampering before deserialization occurs.
Provenance of associated data allows detection of untrusted sources before deserialization or processing occurs.