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A recently discovered vulnerability in the Meta Llama framework may lead a gateway to remote code execution attacks on AI based systems. Suggestion came in from CVE-2024-50050 saying that the security mechanism needs to be strengthen in all stages of AI development.
The Vulnerability in Focus
The Llama framework is used to deploy AI models from the very beginning to the model making space and therefore has been under intense scrutiny and has vulnerability to most of the platform’s security structures. The issue tracked as CVE-2024-50050 is due to insecure deserialization of Pickle-format Python objects in the inference server and allows an attacker to inject any code they want and remotely execute code.
Timeline:
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Reported by: Oligo Security on September 24, 2024.
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Severity: Meta says the issue had a CVSS score of 6.3; Snyk rated this as critical with a 9.3 score.
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Root cause: Original issue is unsafe Pickle serialization through the framework’s API.
Meta fixed the issue on October 10, 2024 (0.0.41) and switched to a much more secure JSON serialization.
Impact Of Vulnerability
Serialization-related vulnerabilities will be the most insidious, especially in AI where sensitive data and apps are said to be critical. In some cases this could be very dramatic failures such as:
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Data theft: Unauthorised access to confidential information.
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Model compromise: Corruption/altered behaviour of AI models.
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Service disruption: First-loss supported AI services will come crashing down.
This is another category of security issues with AI, deserialization issues that have popped up in Keras with the TensorFlow framework d2024 - another one. So the recurring issues show we still need to be vigilant with AI systems.
Security: Best Practices for Developers
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Patching Is the Answer: An on-the-spot fix would be to update the software. In this case, the vulnerable component Meta Llama 0.0.41 is updated to the latest version.
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Do Not Use Insecure Serialization: Using pickle for serialization is an insecure format. Do not use it and instead use JSON.
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Do Not Expose AI Endpoints: AI endpoints should never be public-facing and only open to trusted environments.
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Audit Regularly: Find and fix at the AI framework and dependency level.
AI Security: An Infestation
The Llama framework vulnerability is part of a much bigger stream of cyber threats in AI systems. Models are a target of choice for sectors like finance, healthcare, and defense, so cybercriminals will exploit any weakness.
As Deep Instinct’s Mark Vaitzman says, “LLMs are making threats better, faster, and much more precise.”. AI vulnerabilities are coming for your future security models.
A Call for Cybersecurity in AI
With the Meta Llama exposure, we see that something more than just CI is needed to push security into customers—developers, companies, and cybersecurity professionals need to work together so the chaos this technology brings will yield more benefits.
AI is the future, but if the policies don’t allow us to push security, it will cost us big time on the surface. Defense against vulnerabilities should not be seen as a bureaucracy but as the very foundation on which we try to build the strength and trust in AI for the future.