AI agent vulnerability · Transformers

CVE-2025-5197: Hugging Face Transformers Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability

mediumCVSS 3.0 5.3GHSA-9356-575x-2w9m

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in the Hugging Face Transformers library, specifically in the converttfweightnametoptweightname() function. This function, responsible for converting TensorFlow weight names to PyTorch format, uses a regex pattern /[^/]([^/])/ that can be exploited to cause excessive CPU consumption through crafted input strings due to catastrophic backtracking.

Published Aug 6, 2025

Affected packages

transformers

Ecosystem: PyPI
Affected: < 4.53.0
Fixed in: 4.53.0
Check: pip show transformers

Advisory details

From the GitHub Advisory Database (CC BY 4.0).

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in the Hugging Face Transformers library, specifically in the convert_tf_weight_name_to_pt_weight_name() function. This function, responsible for converting TensorFlow weight names to PyTorch format, uses a regex pattern /[^/]*___([^/]*)/ that can be exploited to cause excessive CPU consumption through crafted input strings due to catastrophic backtracking. The vulnerability affects versions up to 4.51.3 and is fixed in version 4.53.0. This issue can lead to service disruption, resource exhaustion, and potential API service vulnerabilities, impacting model conversion processes between TensorFlow and PyTorch formats.

References

How this page is made: the data panel comes from the GitHub Advisory Database, CISA’s KEV catalog, the NVD and FIRST EPSS, and updates twice a day. No analysis has been written for this entry yet. Methodology

More Transformers vulnerabilities

All Transformers entries