CVE-2026-54236

vLLM: incomplete CVE-2026-22778 fix leaks PIL repr addresses via the Anthropic API router

Researcher: Kai Aizen, SnailSploit (@SnailSploit), Adversarial & Offensive Security Research
Severity: CVSS 3.1 5.3 (Medium) AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Target: https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm

The fix for CVE-2026-22778 / GHSA-4r2x-xpjr-7cvv (PRs #31987 and #32319) introduced sanitize_message and applied it at four FastAPI exception-handling sites in the OpenAI router. The sanitizer strips object-repr memory addresses (<_io.BytesIO object at 0x7a95e299e750> → <_io.BytesIO object>) before error messages reach the client, defeating the ASLR-bypass primitive that CVE-2026-22778 chained with a libopenjp2 heap overflow for RCE.

The fix is incomplete: response paths added to vLLM at or after the same time as the fix continue to echo str(exc) directly to clients without sanitize_message. The original Stage 1 primitive, sending malformed image bytes so PIL raises UnidentifiedImageError whose message contains the BytesIO object repr, reaches all of them unmodified and leaks the heap address verbatim in the response body.

All five lines below are present in main HEAD (771e1e48b, 2026-05-26).

Affected sites

Current main HEAD (771e1e48b, 2026-05-26):

Why the global exception handler does not save these paths

api_server.py registers a catch-all app.exception_handler(Exception)(exception_handler) at line 262, and that handler calls create_error_response(exc) which DOES apply sanitize_message. However, FastAPI exception handlers fire only on unhandled exceptions that propagate out of a route function.

All affected HTTP paths catch Exception inside the route coroutine and construct the response themselves:

# vllm/entrypoints/anthropic/api_router.py:71-81 (POST /v1/messages)
try:
    generator = await handler.create_messages(request, raw_request)
except Exception as e:
    logger.exception("Error in create_messages: %s", e)
    return JSONResponse(
        status_code=HTTPStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR.value,
        content=AnthropicErrorResponse(
            error=AnthropicError(
                type="internal_error",
                message=str(e),       # <-- unsanitized
            )
        ).model_dump(),
    )

Because the exception is caught and a JSONResponse is returned in-route, every registered FastAPI exception handler, including the sanitizing global one, is bypassed. The WebSocket path bypasses it for a different reason: WebSocket frames don't traverse FastAPI's HTTP exception handler chain at all.

Reachability, the same primitive as the parent CVE

The Anthropic Messages API accepts image content parts in the request body (type: "image" with base64 source.data or type: "image_url"). Image bytes are passed to the same multimodal loader used by the OpenAI router. Malformed bytes cause PIL.Image.open to raise:

UnidentifiedImageError: cannot identify image file <_io.BytesIO object at 0x7a95e299e750>

The exception propagates up through handler.create_messages into the except Exception as e: at api_router.py:75. str(e) returns the exception message verbatim, including the address. The address ends up in the error.message field of the JSON response body returned to the attacker. ASLR entropy on the affected process drops from ~4 billion to ~8 candidates, identically to CVE-2026-22778 Stage 1.

The same primitive is reachable on POST /v1/messages/count_tokens (route #2), inside the SSE streaming converter when an exception is raised mid-stream (route #3), and over the realtime speech-to-text WebSocket when audio decoder or generation paths raise an exception containing any object repr (routes #4, #5).

Chronology, these are scope misses, not legacy code

• 2026-01-09: PR #31987 (aa125ecf0) introduces sanitize_message and applies it to OpenAI router HTTP exception handlers.
• 2026-01-15 (six days later): PR #32369 (4c1c501a7) adds vllm/entrypoints/anthropic/api_router.py containing line 78's message=str(e). The fix was not applied to the new router.
• 2026-03-02 (~two months later): PR #35588 (9a87b0578) adds the Anthropic count_tokens endpoint, replicating the same message=str(e) pattern at line 124.
• 2026-05-12 (~four months later): PR #42370 (d37e25ffb) consolidates speech-to-text entrypoints and the realtime WebSocket uses send_error(str(e), ...) for both error paths.
• 2026-05-26: current main HEAD, all five lines still present.

1. Apply sanitize_message symmetrically to the five sites

# vllm/entrypoints/anthropic/api_router.py, add at top:
from vllm.entrypoints.utils import sanitize_message

# Line 78 (POST /v1/messages) and Line 124 (count_tokens):
message=sanitize_message(str(e)),

# vllm/entrypoints/anthropic/serving.py, add at top:
from vllm.entrypoints.utils import sanitize_message

# Line 808:
error=AnthropicError(type="internal_error", message=sanitize_message(str(e))),

# vllm/entrypoints/speech_to_text/realtime/connection.py, add at top:
from vllm.entrypoints.utils import sanitize_message

# Lines 75 and 265:
await self.send_error(sanitize_message(str(e)), "processing_error")

2. Tighten the regex (defense in depth)

The current regex r" at 0x[0-9a-f]+>" is narrow, it only matches the exact CPython builtin object-repr suffix in lowercase hex with a trailing >. Future Python versions, C extensions, or custom __repr__ methods could produce non-matching formats that re-enable the leak:

# vllm/entrypoints/utils.py
def sanitize_message(message: str) -> str:
    # Strip any standalone hex address; downstream observers don't need them.
    return re.sub(r"\b0x[0-9a-fA-F]{6,}\b", "0x?", message)

3. Future-proofing: consider a response middleware

Both the route-local exception handling pattern (Anthropic router) and the WebSocket path bypass FastAPI's exception handler chain. A response-level middleware that always invokes sanitize_message on outgoing error bodies would prevent this class of regression entirely.

Affected versions

• All vLLM versions containing vllm/entrypoints/anthropic/api_router.py (introduced 2026-01-15 in PR #32369).
• All vLLM versions containing vllm/entrypoints/speech_to_text/realtime/connection.py (introduced 2026-05-12 in PR #42370).
• Confirmed present in main HEAD 771e1e48b (2026-05-26).

Steps to reproduce

1. Clone the target: git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm
2. Run the proof of concept (PoC.py) against the cloned source.
3. Observe the result shown under Verified result below.

Credit

Kai Aizen, SnailSploit (@SnailSploit). Adversarial & Offensive Security Research.

Kodem intelligence

A fix for this vulnerability was added here: https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/pull/45119

1. What is CVE-2026-54236? CVE-2026-54236 is a medium-severity security vulnerability in vllm (pip), affecting versions <= 0.23.0. No fixed version is listed yet.
2. Which versions of vllm are affected by CVE-2026-54236? vllm (pip) versions <= 0.23.0 is affected.
3. Is there a fix for CVE-2026-54236? No fixed version is listed for CVE-2026-54236 yet. Monitor the advisory for updates and apply mitigations in the interim.
4. Is CVE-2026-54236 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-54236 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
5. What actually determines whether CVE-2026-54236 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.