GPT Academic provides interactive interfaces for large language models. A vulnerability was found in gpt_academic versions 3.64 through 3.73. The server deserializes untrustworthy data from the client, which may risk remote code execution. Any device that exposes the GPT Academic service to the Internet is vulnerable. Version 3.74 contains a patch for the issue. There are no known workarounds aside from upgrading to a patched version.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.