Kubeflow Pipelines: Pipeline archive upload allows decompression bomb to exhaust server memory
Impact
Kubeflow Pipelines versions before 2.18.0 are affected by a decompression bomb vulnerability, where a small compressed archive can consume large amounts of memory, potentially exhausting server resources. An attacker with access to the upload endpoints can trigger the issue without successful pipeline-create authorization. The impact depends on deployment resource limits and concurrent activity.
Summarized by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast. Verify details against the original sources.Affected packages
Start with the recorded fix for your release branch. Check your installed version and test compatibility before upgrading. Fixing this advisory does not rule out other vulnerabilities in the release.
| Affected range | Recorded fix |
|---|---|
| Earlier releases before 0.0.0-20260831164314-ba9ae72cc860Semantic versions | 0.0.0-20260831164314-ba9ae72cc860 |
Version evidence: OSV · GHSA-8fmv-6rg5-5924
View original version evidence (1 explicit versions)
Affected products
Vendor version evidence. Product records are separate from automatic dependency matching.
kubeflow · GitHub_M
pipelines
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kubeflow · GitHub_M
pipelines
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affected
< 2.18.0
Other versions: unknown
Original source description
Summary
The Kubeflow Pipelines API server decompresses uploaded pipeline archives without adequately bounding expanded data in affected versions. A small ZIP or gzip-compressed tar archive can consume disproportionately large amounts of memory while the server locates or reads the pipeline file, potentially exhausting API-server resources and interrupting service.
Multipart pipeline and pipeline-version upload processing decompresses the archive before namespace authorization, so a caller who can reach those endpoints does not need a successful pipeline-create authorization decision to trigger the issue. External authentication and network controls can restrict reachability. URL-import handlers authorize before fetching and decompressing a remote archive.
The amount of expansion needed to exhaust memory depends on deployment resource limits and concurrent activity; no particular archive is guaranteed to crash every deployment.
Remediation
Upgrade the API server to Kubeflow Pipelines 2.18.0. Versions through 2.17.3 are affected; the first affected release has not been established.
PR #14171 bounds compressed input and extracted pipeline data. PR #14186 strengthens the total tar traversal budget, including metadata and skipped entries. The 2.18 release also includes configurable upload and specification limits; operators should review the shipped settings and resource budget. These controls address pipeline archive amplification and do not establish general HTTP-body, temporary-disk, concurrency, or CPU limits.
Until upgrading, restrict access to upload and import endpoints and apply deployment-level request and resource controls. A compressed upload-size limit alone does not prevent decompression amplification. Regression tests cover compressed input, selected-entry boundaries, and tar traversal budgets; no deployed-server OOM test was performed for this assessment.
Credit
bugbunny.ai discovered and reported the issue. Ayush Gupta (@Ayush-kathil) authored the archive fixes in #14171 and #14186, with Jeff Spahr (@jeffspahr) contributing regression coverage to #14171.
@BrianWillows later submitted a mixed report that included source analysis of pipeline-archive decompression.
Inside the record
Evidence available
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Original records
CVE-2026-118761View the latest unmodified CVE JSON from the official source. It may be newer than this imported page.
cve.new JSON →Underlying weaknesses
The source’s classification of what caused the vulnerability.
Contributing organizations · 2
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Additional data publisher
What changed
Follow changes- CVE · CVE-2026-118761
Observed 2026-10-29T21:08:04.766Z · upstream updated 2026-10-29T20:18:59.625Z
Prioritization updated
before
[]
after
[ { "source": "CISA-ADP", "type": "SSVC", "role": "CISA Coordinator", "timestamp": "2026-10-29T20:18:49.737846Z", "decisions": [ { "name": "Exploitation", "value": "none" }, { "name": "Automatable", "value": "yes" }, { "name": "Technical Impact", "value": "partial" } ] } ]
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