CVE-2025-3165
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedA vulnerability classified as critical has been found in thu-pacman chitu 0.1.0. This affects the function torch.load of the file chitu/chitu/backend.py. The manipulation of the argument ckpt_path/quant_ckpt_dir leads to deserialization. An attack has to be approached locally.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceThe chitu library uses torch.load with user-controllable paths (ckpt_path, quant_ckpt_dir) in chitu/chitu/backend.py, allowing loading of untrusted PyTorch checkpoint files. Since torch.load deserializes pickle objects by default, a malicious checkpoint can execute arbitrary code on the local system.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- Low
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- Low
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Verify chitu library is installedRun 'pip show chitu' or 'pip list | grep -i chitu' to confirm the library is present in your Python environmentAffected if The chitu library is installed and being used in your project
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Locate the vulnerable backend.py fileFind the chitu/chitu/backend.py file in your Python environment or project directory (use 'python -c "import chitu; print(chitu.__file__)"' to locate the package)Affected if The file exists in your environment, indicating the vulnerable code is present
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Inspect torch.load calls in backend.pyOpen chitu/chitu/backend.py and search for 'torch.load' calls, specifically those using 'ckpt_path' or 'quant_ckpt_dir' as parametersAffected if torch.load is called with user-controllable paths (ckpt_path or quant_ckpt_dir) in the code
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Check for weights_only parameterIn backend.py, examine each torch.load call to see if it includes 'weights_only=True' as a parameterAffected if torch.load is called without weights_only=True, allowing arbitrary pickle deserialization
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Determine if your application uses vulnerable checkpoint loadingSearch your own code for imports from chitu and calls to functions that pass checkpoint paths (ckpt_path or quant_ckpt_dir) to the chitu backendAffected if Your code passes user-controllable or untrusted paths to chitu's checkpoint loading functions
You are affected if the chitu library is installed and your environment loads checkpoint files via torch.load without the weights_only=True parameter, enabling arbitrary code execution through malicious pickle objects.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataReplace torch.load calls with safer alternatives: use weights_only=True parameter (requires PyTorch 1.8+) to prevent arbitrary object deserialization, or migrate to SafeTensors format which does not use pickle and is designed for secure loading.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation6.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-3165 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-3165 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
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