VDB
KO
HIGH 7.3

GHSA-7g5w-pq96-8c5w

flash-attention contains an insecure deserialization vulnerability in its checkpoint loading mechanism

Details

The flash-attention training framework thru commit e724e2588cbe754beb97cf7c011b5e7e34119e62 (2025-13-04) contains an insecure deserialization vulnerability (CWE-502) in its checkpoint loading mechanism. The load_checkpoint() function in checkpoint.py and the checkpoint loading code in eval.py use torch.load() without enabling the security-restrictive weights_only=True parameter. This allows the deserialization of arbitrary Python objects via the pickle module. An attacker can exploit this by providing a maliciously crafted checkpoint file. When a victim loads this checkpoint during model warmstarting or evaluation, arbitrary code is executed on the victim's system.

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Affected packages

PyPI / flash-attn
Introduced in: 0

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References