GHSA-8fr4-5q9j-m8gm

Summary

vllm has a critical remote code execution vector in a config class named Nemotron_Nano_VL_Config. When vllm loads a model config that contains an auto_map entry, the config class resolves that mapping with get_class_from_dynamic_module(...) and immediately instantiates the returned class. This fetches and executes Python from the remote repository referenced in the auto_map string. Crucially, this happens even when the caller explicitly sets trust_remote_code=False in vllm.transformers_utils.config.get_config. In practice, an attacker can publish a benign-looking frontend repo whose config.json points via auto_map to a separate malicious backend repo; loading the frontend will silently run the backend’s code on the victim host.

Details

The vulnerable code resolves and instantiates classes from auto_map entries without checking whether those entries point to a different repo or whether remote code execution is allowed.

class Nemotron_Nano_VL_Config(PretrainedConfig):
    model_type = 'Llama_Nemotron_Nano_VL'

    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(**kwargs)

        if vision_config is not None:
            assert "auto_map" in vision_config and "AutoConfig" in vision_config["auto_map"]
            # <-- vulnerable dynamic resolution + instantiation happens here
            vision_auto_config = get_class_from_dynamic_module(*vision_config["auto_map"]["AutoConfig"].split("--")[::-1])
            self.vision_config = vision_auto_config(**vision_config)
        else:
            self.vision_config = PretrainedConfig()

get_class_from_dynamic_module(...) is capable of fetching and importing code from the Hugging Face repo specified in the mapping. trust_remote_code is not enforced for this code path. As a result, a frontend repo can redirect the loader to any backend repo and cause code execution, bypassing the trust_remote_code guard.

Impact

This is a critical vulnerability because...