CVE-2026-44555: Open WebUI: Base Model Routing Bypasses Access Control via Model Chaining

Severity: high (CVSS 7.6 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2026-05-15 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-862

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.

Affected products

open-webui: before 0.9.0 — fixed in 0.9.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: open-webui 0.9.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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