Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-1260: Google Sentencepiece heap overflow via malicious model file

CVE-2026-1260 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.8 · Published 2026-01-22

Technologies: Red Hat AI Inference Server. Vendors: Google, Red Hat, PyPI.

Executive brief

Sentencepiece, a widely used text processing library for machine learning models, contains a security vulnerability that can be triggered by loading a specially crafted, malicious model file. If an application or user processes such a file, it could lead to a complete system compromise, unauthorized data access, or service crashes. This issue primarily affects environments where users might download and use untrusted machine learning models from external sources.

Technical details

A heap buffer overflow vulnerability exists in Google Sentencepiece before version 0.2.1. The flaw is triggered during the loading of a vulnerable model file that contains an invalid precompiled normalization model, which is not typically generated during standard training procedures. An attacker can exploit this by providing a malicious model file to an application using the library. Successful exploitation requires the victim to load the crafted file (User Interaction) and can result in arbitrary code execution or a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The issue has been addressed in Sentencepiece version 0.2.1, and Red Hat has released updated images for OpenShift AI to mitigate the risk.

Affected products

  • Google Sentencepiece < 0.2.1
  • Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift AI 2.25, 3.3
  • Red Hat Red Hat AI Inference Server 3

Timeline

  • 2026-01-22: disclosed
  • 2026-01-22: advisory
  • 2026-03-04: patched: Red Hat released security advisories RHSA-2026:3713 and RHSA-2026:3782

References

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