# CVE-2025-66960: Denial of service in n/a

> A remote attacker can cause a denial of service in Ollama by sending malicious GGUF metadata that triggers excessive resource consumption during string parsing.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 21 Jan 2026
- **Updated:** 22 Jan 2026
- **Also known as:** GHSA-jr3x-q8gx-4gw3, MINI-hwpp-vf7w-7h4f

## What is CVE-2025-66960?

CVE-2025-66960 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 21 Jan 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

An issue in ollama v.0.12.10 allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service via the fs/ggml/gguf.go, function readGGUFV1String reads a string length from untrusted GGUF metadata

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption), CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-66960?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Ollama Ollama.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-66960?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2025-66960 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2025-66960 exists.

## Other vulnerabilities in n/a

- [CVE-2025-63389](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-63389/): Ollama Platform has missing authentication enabling attackers to perform model management operations (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2024-45436](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-45436/): Ollama can extract members of a ZIP archive outside of the parent directory (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2026-7482](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-7482/): Ollama heap out-of-bounds read in GGUF tensor parsing leaks server process memory to unauthenticated remote attackers (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2024-37032](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-37032/): Ollama does not validate the format of the digest (sha256 with 64 hex digits) (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2025-15514](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-15514/): Ollama Multi-Modal Model Image Processing NULL Pointer Dereference (high 8.7)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-66960 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-66960 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 21 Jan 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2025-66960 exists.

Affected product: n/a. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-66960/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-66960/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-66960
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-66960
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-66960

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-66960/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.