CVE-2026-7482
Published: 04 May 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-7482 is a critical-severity Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 28.4th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-14 (Public Access Protections) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Validates attacker-supplied GGUF tensor offsets and sizes against actual file length to prevent heap out-of-bounds reads during quantization processing.
Implements memory protections such as bounds checking to block unauthorized heap buffer reads that leak sensitive data like API keys and conversation history.
Enforces protections like authentication or access restrictions on unauthenticated public endpoints /api/create and /api/push exposed via OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct remote exploitation of unauthenticated public API endpoint (/api/create) for memory disclosure (T1190) enabling local data/credential access (T1005, T1552) followed by exfiltration via unauthenticated web service push to attacker registry (T1567).
NVD Description
Ollama before 0.17.1 contains a heap out-of-bounds read vulnerability in the GGUF model loader. The /api/create endpoint accepts an attacker-supplied GGUF file in which the declared tensor offset and size exceed the file's actual length; during quantization in fs/ggml/gguf.go and…
more
server/quantization.go (WriteTo()), the server reads past the allocated heap buffer. The leaked memory contents may include environment variables, API keys, system prompts, and concurrent users' conversation data, and can be exfiltrated by uploading the resulting model artifact through the /api/push endpoint to an attacker-controlled registry. The /api/create and /api/push endpoints have no authentication in the upstream distribution. Default deployments bind to 127.0.0.1, but the documented OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0 configuration is widely used in practice (large public-internet exposure observed).
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-7482 is a heap out-of-bounds read vulnerability (CWE-125) in the GGUF model loader of Ollama versions before 0.17.1. The issue arises in the /api/create endpoint, which accepts attacker-supplied GGUF files where the declared tensor offset and size exceed the file's actual length. During quantization processing in fs/ggml/gguf.go and server/quantization.go (specifically the WriteTo() function), the server reads past the allocated heap buffer, potentially leaking sensitive memory contents. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H).
An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this by uploading a crafted GGUF file to the /api/create endpoint, which lacks authentication in the upstream distribution. The out-of-bounds read exposes memory including environment variables, API keys, system prompts, and conversation data from concurrent users. The attacker can then exfiltrate the leaked data by using the similarly unauthenticated /api/push endpoint to upload the resulting model artifact to an attacker-controlled registry. While default deployments bind to 127.0.0.1, the OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0 configuration is widely used, leading to large-scale public internet exposure.
Ollama addressed the vulnerability in version 0.17.1, as documented in the project's release notes, pull request #14406, and the fixing commit 88d57d0483cca907e0b23a968c83627a20b21047. Security practitioners should upgrade to 0.17.1 or later and restrict network access to the /api/create and /api/push endpoints where possible.
This issue is notable in AI/ML contexts, as Ollama is commonly used for local large language model inference with GGUF-format models, and significant public exposure has been observed in practice.
Details
- CWE(s)