vLLM: extract_hidden_states speculative decoding crashes server on any request with penalty parameters
vLLM
More for vLLM RSS feed for vLLM
- Severity
- Medium, CVSS 6.5
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Record
- CVE-2026-44223
- Affects
- vLLM
- Known exploited
- Not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Published
- Record first published by the source
- May 12, 2026
- Source last modified
- June 22, 2026
Description
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models (LLMs). From 0.18.0 to before 0.20.0, the extract_hidden_states speculative decoding proposer in vLLM returns a tensor with an incorrect shape after the first decode step, causing a RuntimeError that crashes the EngineCore process. The crash is triggered when any request in the batch uses sampling penalty parameters (repetition_penalty, frequency_penalty, or presence_penalty). A single request with a penalty parameter (e.g., "repetition_penalty": 1.1) is sufficient to crash the server. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.20.0.
Description quoted from the NVD record.