CVE-2026-44555
Open WebUI: Base Model Routing Bypasses Access Control via Model Chaining
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 7.6 High
- Published
- May 15, 2026
- Updated
- May 15, 2026
- Reserved
- May 6, 2026
Description
Open WebUI is a self-hosted artificial intelligence platform designed to operate entirely offline. Prior to 0.9.0, Open WebUI supports model composition via base_model_id: a user-defined model (e.g., "Cheap Assistant") can reference an existing base model (e.g., "gpt-4-turbo-restricted") that provides the actual inference capability. When a user queries the composed model, the access control pipeline verifies the user has access to the composed model but never re-verifies access to the chained base model. Additionally, the model creation and import endpoints accept arbitrary base_model_id values without checking that the caller has access to that base model. Combined, this allows any user with the default model creation permission to create a model that chains to a restricted base model — and then invoke it, causing the server to dispatch the request to the restricted base model using the admin-configured API key. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 7.6 High | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L | GitHub_M |
Weaknesses
- CWE-862 Missing Authorization
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
open-webuiopen-webui |
|
References
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