GHSA-489j-g2vx-39wf — medium GitHub Advisory (CVE-2025-3262) in pip/transformers

Description

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability was discovered in the huggingface/transformers repository, specifically in version 4.49.0. The vulnerability is due to inefficient regular expression complexity in the SETTING_RE variable within the transformers/commands/chat.py file. The regex contains repetition groups and non-optimized quantifiers, leading to exponential backtracking when processing 'almost matching' payloads. This can degrade application performance and potentially result in a denial-of-service (DoS) when handling specially crafted input strings. The issue is fixed in version 4.51.0.

Basic information

Type: reviewed
Severity: medium
Advisory on GitHub: Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory: —
Source code: Browse source ↗
Published (advisory): 2025-07-07 12:30:22 UTC
Updated: 2025-08-04 15:29:19 UTC
GitHub reviewed: 2025-07-07 23:44:56 UTC
NVD published: 2025-07-07

Score	Percentile
0.11%	29.68%

CVSS Scores

Base score	Version	Severity	Vector
5.3	3.1	—	`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L` Click to expand Attack vector (AV:N) Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine. Attack complexity (AC:L) Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup. Privileges required (PR:N) No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough. User interaction (UI:N) Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping. Scope (S:U) Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems. Confidentiality (C:N) Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way. Integrity (I:N) Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged. Availability (A:L) Might cause slowdowns, glitches, or partial disruption—not a full brick.

Identifiers

Type	Value
GHSA	GHSA-489j-g2vx-39wf ↗
CVE	CVE-2025-3262 ↗

CWEs

CWE id	Name
CWE-1333	Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	First patched	Vulnerable functions
pip	transformers	>= 4.49.0, < 4.51.0	4.51.0	—

Transformers vulnerable to ReDoS attack through its SETTING_RE variable