CVE-2026-44555

HIGH

Open WebUI: Base Model Routing Bypasses Access Control via Model Chaining

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

Open WebUI is a self-hosted artificial intelligence platform designed to operate entirely offline. Prior to 0.9.0, Open WebUI supports model composition via base_model_id: a user-defined model (e.g., "Cheap Assistant") can reference an existing base model (e.g., "gpt-4-turbo-restricted") that provides the actual inference capability. When a user queries the composed model, the access control pipeline verifies the user has access to the composed model but never re-verifies access to the chained base model. Additionally, the model creation and import endpoints accept arbitrary base_model_id values without checking that the caller has access to that base model. Combined, this allows any user with the default model creation permission to create a model that chains to a restricted base model — and then invoke it, causing the server to dispatch the request to the restricted base model using the admin-configured API key. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.0.

References (1)

Core 1
Core References

Scores

CVSS v3 7.6
EPSS 0.0004
EPSS Percentile 13.9%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation poc
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-862
Status published
Products (3)
open-webui/open-webui < 0.9.0
openwebui/open_webui < 0.9.0
pypi/open-webui 0 - 0.9.0PyPI
Published May 15, 2026
Tracked Since May 16, 2026