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Public proof of concept

CVE-2026-42249

A public proof of concept exists; no exploitation attested.

  • Published2026-04-29
  • WeaknessCWE-22 · CWE-494

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

Description

Ollama for Windows contains a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in its update mechanism due to improper handling of attacker‑controlled HTTP response headers. When downloading updates, the application constructs local file paths using values derived from HTTP headers without validation. These values are passed directly to filepath.Join, allowing path traversal sequences (../) to be resolved and enabling files to be written outside the intended update staging directory. An attacker who can influence update responses can exploit this flaw to write arbitrary executables to attacker‑chosen locations accessible to the current user, including the Windows Startup directory. This allows execution of arbitrary executables. Critically, when chained with CVE‑2026‑42248 (Missing Signature Verification for Updates), an attacker can deliver malicious payloads that are written to sensitive locations and executed automatically. Because Ollama for Windows performs silent automatic updates and executes staged binaries without user interaction, this results in automatic and persistent code execution without user awareness. Maintainers of this project were notified early about this vulnerability, but didn't respond with the details of vulnerability or vulnerable version range. Versions from 0.12.10 to 0.17.5 were tested and confirmed as vulnerable, other versions were not tested but might also be vulnerable.

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2026-04-2912:16CVE publishedNVD

Versions per branch

NVD
Ollamaversion to verify
BranchAffectedFixed in
0.x≥ 0.12.10, ≤ 0.17.5no fix published

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Products declared by the CNA1 product

As CERT-PL, the CNA that assigned this CVE, declared them in the CVE record; versions as written.

Source: the CNA record (CVE Program), © The MITRE Corporation,CVE Terms of UseCVE recordupdated 2026-04-29

Distribution builds and vendor advisories

Packages from OSV.dev and products from the vendors' CSAF advisories.

version not verifiedVersions not verified: read as OSV.dev and the vendors publish them, not checked against each vendor's release list.

Packages

  • ollamaMinimOSall versions · fixed in 0.17.6-r0

Full record on NVD

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
no entry
Exploit-DB
Proof of concept
Metasploit modules
1 moduleexploit/windows/persistence/ollama_auto_updaterank: excellentModule metadata: Metasploit Framework, © Rapid7, Inc., BSD-3-Clause.
Metasploit Framework

Sources

Identifiers

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 4.0 vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:L/SI:L/SA:L/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Published
2026-04-29
Last Modified
2026-06-17
NVD status
Analyzed
GitHub Advisory
GHSA-7mp6-jmch-f3fh

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-42249?

Ollama for Windows contains a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in its update mechanism due to improper handling of attacker‑controlled HTTP response headers. When downloading updates, the application constructs local file paths using values derived from HTTP headers without validation. These values are passed directly to filepath.Join, allowing path traversal sequences (../) to be resolved and enabling files to be written outside the intended update staging directory. An attacker who can influence update responses can exploit this flaw to write arbitrary executables to attacker‑chosen locations accessible to the current user, including the Windows Startup directory. This allows execution of arbitrary executables. Critically, when chained with CVE‑2026‑42248 (Missing Signature Verification for Updates), an attacker can deliver malicious payloads that are written to sensitive locations and executed automatically. Because Ollama for Windows performs silent automatic updates and executes staged binaries without user interaction, this results in automatic and persistent code execution without user awareness. Maintainers of this project were notified early about this vulnerability, but didn't respond with the details of vulnerability or vulnerable version range. Versions from 0.12.10 to 0.17.5 were tested and confirmed as vulnerable, other versions were not tested but might also be vulnerable.

Is CVE-2026-42249 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2026-42249 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 1.0% on 2026-11-08, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2026-42249?

CVE-2026-42249 has a CVSS v3 base score of 9.8 (CRITICAL severity), with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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Sources for this record