Transformers save_pretrained path traversal allows arbitrary file writes through chat template names

High7.1CVE-2026-9856 · Published Aug 2, 2026 · updated Sep 10, 2026

A vulnerability in huggingface/transformers versions < 5.10.0 allows an attacker to perform arbitrary file writes via path traversal. The issue resides in the `save_pretrained()` methods of `PreTrainedTokenizerBase` and `ProcessorMixin`, where keys from the `chat_template` dictionary are used directly as filenames without proper validation. An attacker can exploit this by publishing a malicious Hugging Face Hub repository with a crafted `tokenizer_config.json` file. When a victim downloads and saves the tokenizer or processor, the attacker-controlled keys can escape the intended save directory, enabling arbitrary file writes with attacker-controlled content. This vulnerability affects multiple processors inheriting from `ProcessorMixin`, including Idefics, Florence, Gemma, Phi, and Qwen-VL.