Path Traversal in Huggingface Huggingface/transformers

CVE-2026-9856

A vulnerability in huggingface/transformers versions <=5.8.0.dev0 allows an attacker to perform arbitrary file writes via path traversal. The issue resides in the `save_pretrained()` methods of `PreTrainedTokenizerBase` and `ProcessorMixin`, where keys from the `chat_template` dictionary are used directly as filenames without proper validation. An attacker can exploit this by publishing a malicious Hugging Face Hub repository with a crafted `tokenizer_config.json` file. When a victim downloads and saves the tokenizer or processor, the attacker-controlled keys can escape the intended save directory, enabling arbitrary file writes with attacker-controlled content. This vulnerability affects multiple processors inheriting from `ProcessorMixin`, including Idefics, Florence, Gemma, Phi, and Qwen-VL.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

EPSS: 0.003 (22.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.1 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-9856?
CVE-2026-9856 is a high-severity vulnerability in Huggingface Huggingface/transformers, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 7.1/10. Published 2026-08-02.
How severe is CVE-2026-9856?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.1 out of 10.