Open WebUI: Base Model Routing Bypasses Access Control via Model Chaining
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.
Problem Types
| Type | CWE ID | Description |
|---|
| CWE | CWE-862 | CWE-862: Missing Authorization |
Type: CWE
Description: CWE-862: Missing Authorization
Metrics
| Version | Base score | Base severity | Vector |
|---|
| 3.1 | 7.6 | HIGH | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L |
Version: 3.1
Base score: 7.6
Base severity: HIGH
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L