Unauthenticated OOM DoS in vLLM VideoMediaIO.load_base64()
CVE-2026-5497 affects vLLM version 0.8.0 and later. The vulnerability is in the VideoMediaIO.load_base64() method when handling video/jpeg data URLs. The method parses the supplied base64 data by splitting on commas and treating the resulting elements as individual JPEG frames, but it does not enforce a limit on the number of frames processed. A remote attacker can submit a single crafted request containing thousands of comma-separated base64-encoded JPEG frames through the OpenAI-compatible chat completions API. The server attempts to decode all supplied frames into memory, which can exhaust available memory and terminate or crash the process.
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Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.
video/jpeg data URLs via the OpenAI-compatible chat completions API. Enforce maximum request-body sizes, frame-count limits, and memory/processing quotas at the application layer or upstream reverse proxy/API gateway. Where operationally feasible, require authentication for the affected endpoint and apply rate limiting to reduce unauthenticated abuse.Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
VideoMediaIO.load_base64() for video/jpeg data URLs, and reject or truncate inputs exceeding safe limits. Additional defensive remediation includes enforcing memory budgeting during decode operations and validating media structure before allocating buffers for all frames.Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
6 sources tracked across advisories and community write-ups. News coverage will land here when it surfaces.
No news coverage yet. Advisories and community discussion only.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.