Is CVE-2026-116178 exploited in the wild?

No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-116178 being exploited in the wild.

How severe is CVE-2026-116178?

Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.9, published 25 October 2026.

Which products and versions are affected?

vllm (PyPI) ECOSYSTEM:introduced=0.20.0,fixed=0.30.0; vLLM Project vllm 0.20.0 to 0.29.x.

How is CVE-2026-116178 attacked?

It is attacked over the network, in a software library.

Am I affected by CVE-2026-116178?

Check whether you run vllm (PyPI) or vLLM Project vllm at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

CVE-2026-116178: vLLM denial of service in multimodal inference endpoint

CVE-2026-116178 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.9 · Published 2026-10-25

vLLM is a large language model serving engine used to run AI models in production. Versions 0.20.0 through 0.29.x contain a flaw in the multimodal inference endpoint that allows remote attackers to crash the engine by sending malformed image/media metadata, disrupting service for all users until the engine restarts.

Technologies: vllm (PyPI), vLLM Project vllm. Vendors: PyPI, vLLM Project.

Quick answers

Is CVE-2026-116178 exploited in the wild?: No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-116178 being exploited in the wild.
How severe is CVE-2026-116178?: Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.9, published 25 October 2026.
Which products and versions are affected?: vllm (PyPI) ECOSYSTEM:introduced=0.20.0,fixed=0.30.0; vLLM Project vllm 0.20.0 to 0.29.x.
Is there a fix for CVE-2026-116178?: Yes. vllm (PyPI): upgrade to 0.30.0 or later. Until then: Restrict network access to the /inference/v1/generate endpoint using firewall rules or API gateway authentication until upgrading to 0.30.0 or later. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
How is CVE-2026-116178 attacked?: It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
Am I affected by CVE-2026-116178?: Check whether you run vllm (PyPI) or vLLM Project vllm at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

How to fix

vllm (PyPI): upgrade to 0.30.0 or later
```
pip install "vllm>=0.30.0"
```

Restrict network access to the /inference/v1/generate endpoint using firewall rules or API gateway authentication until upgrading to 0.30.0 or later.

Technical details

The disaggregated multimodal /inference/v1/generate endpoint fails to validate client-supplied kwargs_data, mm_hashes, and mm_placeholders fields before passing them to model code. An attacker can send repeated or overlapping placeholder ranges or mismatched list lengths that violate assumptions in model position construction (e.g., Qwen2.5-VL), triggering a fatal crash. This is a network-accessible input validation flaw (CWE-20) requiring no authentication or user interaction.

Affected products

vLLM project vLLM 0.20.0 to 0.29.x

Identifiers

CVE-2026-116178
GHSA-34qw-q2h2-jp3m
PYSEC-2026-4353

Timeline

2026-10-09: disclosed
2026-10-09: patched: fix released in v0.30.0
2026-10-25: advisory

References

This page as Markdown. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link back.