CVE-2026-70493: Open WebUI: Any authenticated user can stall a worker via a knowledge-search pattern that backtracks catastrophically

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2026-08-04 · updated 2026-09-18
Weakness: CWE-1333

Description

Open WebUI is an extensible, feature-rich, and user-friendly self-hosted AI platform. From 0.9.6 until 0.11.0, the built-in knowledge search path in backend/open_webui/tools/knowledge_fs.py and backend/open_webui/tools/builtin.py let a chat participant choose a pattern used to grep knowledge files. Patterns containing regex metacharacters were compiled with Python's backtracking re engine and run against every line of every reachable file with no time limit, so a crafted pattern such as (x|x)*y and one matching uploaded file line can pin one CPU core and block the event loop. This causes availability impact for every other user of the affected worker. This issue is fixed in 0.11.0.

Affected products

open-webui: from 0.9.6 before 0.11.0 — fixed in 0.11.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: open-webui 0.11.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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