GHSA-48jh-3gj7-fg8v CVE-2026-73556 PYSEC-2026-3933

vLLM: ReDoS via structured_outputs.regex in the lm-format-enforcer backend (no compile timeout) — missed sibling of GHSA-rwxx-mrjm-wc2m

Medium PyPI

Severity: 5.3 / 10; Medium · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.52%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 43.92% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity; CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Fix: 0.26.0; Upgrade vllm to this version or later

Description

Summary

The fix for GHSA-rwxx-mrjm-wc2m ("ReDoS via structured_outputs.regex compiled without timeout") wrapped the regex compile in the xgrammar and outlines backends with compile_regex_with_timeout (and, for outlines, validate_regex_is_buildable). The lm-format-enforcer backend was left unguarded: it compiles the attacker-supplied regex with no timeout and no buildability check. A single request with a catastrophic regex hangs the structured-output compile step and stalls the engine worker (denial of service).

Affected code (HEAD d6d39c1)

vllm/v1/structured_output/backend_lm_format_enforcer.py:

line 110: character_level_parser = lmformatenforcer.RegexParser(grammar_spec) — builds an interegular FSM from the attacker regex synchronously, no timeout.
line 155: validate_structured_output_request_lm_format_enforcer returns immediately on if so_params.regex: — no validation.

Sibling backends that WERE patched by GHSA-rwxx:

backend_xgrammar.py:92 → compile_regex_with_timeout(...).
backend_outlines.py:65 → compile_regex_with_timeout(...) (plus validate_regex_is_buildable).

lm-format-enforcer uses the same interegular DFA-construction primitive the advisory cites for the outlines backend.

Reproduction (runtime-verified against the sink)

The sink lmformatenforcer.RegexParser(<regex>) was exercised directly (this is exactly what the backend calls):

baseline  '[0-9]{3}'          -> 0.0002 s
attacker  '(a{1,300}){300}'   -> DID NOT COMPLETE in 20 s (one core pegged at 100% in interegular FSM construction)

End-to-end: start vllm serve <model> --structured-outputs-config '{"backend":"lm-format-enforcer"}', then POST /v1/completions with {"structured_outputs":{"regex":"(a{1,300}){300}"}, ...}. The request never returns; because grammar compile runs in the engine's structured-output path, concurrent requests stall = worker-level DoS. The identical request against the outlines backend is bounded by compile_regex_with_timeout and returns a clean error.

Impact

Unauthenticated denial of service (vLLM ships with no authentication by default). One request pegs a CPU core and blocks the structured-output engine path.

Reachability precondition: the operator must have selected backend=lm-format-enforcer via --structured-outputs-config (the default is auto → xgrammar). This is the same opt-in tier as the outlines backend that GHSA-rwxx already covered.

Suggested remediation

Route the lm-format-enforcer regex compile (backend_lm_format_enforcer.py:110) through the same compile_regex_with_timeout guard already applied to the xgrammar and outlines backends, and reject un-buildable / oversized patterns in validate_structured_output_request_lm_format_enforcer.

Affected versions

PyPI

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
vllm	`< 0.26.0`	`0.26.0`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

vllm PyPI → `0.26.0`

pip

pip install --upgrade "vllm>=0.26.0"

poetry

poetry add "vllm>=0.26.0"

uv

uv add "vllm>=0.26.0"

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 5.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Attack vector: Network
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: None
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: Low

Weakness

CWE-1333: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

The product uses a regular expression with a worst-case computational complexity that is inefficient and possibly exponential.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Use regular expressions that do not support backtracking, e.g. by removing nested quantifiers.
System Configuration: Set backtracking limits in the configuration of the regular expression implementation, such as PHP's pcre.backtrack_limit. Also consider limits on execution time for the process.
Implementation: Do not use regular expressions with untrusted input. If regular expressions must be used, avoid using backtracking in the expression.
Implementation: Limit the length of the input that the regular expression will process.

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.

References

Advisories

Packages

Timeline

Aug 13, 2026 Published
Sep 28, 2026 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-8397-8qf6-f2gm vLLM: Phi-4 multimodal audio encoder materializes and retains full attention matrices: a single max-length audio OOM-crashes the vLLM engine	Medium	Also affects vllm
GHSA-x567-49g5-p4cf vLLM: Responses API bypasses trust_request_chat_template for chat_template_kwargs	Medium	Also affects vllm
GHSA-vvpg-rrww-wpmh vLLM: Permissive default CORS origins allow cross-origin requests to the vLLM HTTP server	Medium	Also affects vllm
GHSA-q97c-p368-75c4 vLLM: Out-of-vocabulary prompt token id passes input validation and triggers a CUDA device-side assert (engine crash / DoS)	Medium	Also affects vllm
GHSA-h3rc-j82p-2c3h vLLM: Untrusted EPS inputs can trigger denial of service or Ghostscript RCE	High	Also affects vllm
GHSA-gq5q-89c7-vhvx vLLM DeepSeek-OCR image processing vulnerable to denial of service	Medium	Also affects vllm
GHSA-6757-hggm-hp2w vLLM: Public multimodal SHM handle forgery reaches worker-side `pickle.loads()` with insecure serialization disabled	High	Also affects vllm
GHSA-542m-9234-8gvf vLLM: DoS via unbounded chat_template Jinja2 rendering exhausts the renderer thread pool	Medium	Also affects vllm

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