CVE-2025-6208
📋 TL;DR
The SimpleDirectoryReader component in llama_index.core versions before 0.12.41 has a memory management flaw where it loads all files from a directory into memory before applying the user-specified file limit. This can cause memory exhaustion and performance degradation, affecting any system using vulnerable versions of llama_index.core to process directories with many files.
💻 Affected Systems
- llama_index.core
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete system memory exhaustion leading to denial of service, application crashes, and potential data loss if the system becomes unresponsive.
Likely Case
Degraded application performance, increased memory usage, and potential application instability when processing directories with many files.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper file limits and monitoring in place, though still inefficient memory usage.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation is straightforward but requires access to functionality using SimpleDirectoryReader. No authentication bypass needed if the functionality is already accessible.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 0.12.41
Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/run-llama/llama_index/commit/53614e2f7913c0e86b58add9470b3c900b6c60b2
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Update llama_index.core to version 0.12.41 or later using pip: pip install llama-index-core>=0.12.41
2. Restart any applications or services using llama_index.core
3. Verify the update was successful by checking the installed version
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Limit directory size before processing
allManually limit the number of files in directories before passing them to SimpleDirectoryReader
# Example: Only process first N files
import os
files = os.listdir('directory')
limited_files = files[:num_files_limit]
# Process limited_files instead of entire directory
Implement custom file filtering
allCreate a wrapper function that filters files before passing to SimpleDirectoryReader
# Python wrapper example
def safe_directory_reader(directory, limit):
import os
files = sorted(os.listdir(directory))[:limit]
# Process only limited files
return process_files(files)
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement strict monitoring of memory usage for applications using SimpleDirectoryReader
- Limit the size of directories that can be processed by the application
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check if llama_index.core version is below 0.12.41 and if SimpleDirectoryReader is used in your codebase.Check Version:
pip show llama-index-core | grep VersionVerify Fix Applied:
Verify that llama_index.core version is 0.12.41 or higher and test directory processing with many files to ensure memory usage remains stable.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- High memory usage spikes when processing directories
- Application crashes or restarts during file processing
- Out of memory errors in application logs
Network Indicators:
- Increased response times for directory processing endpoints
- Timeouts on requests involving file directory operations
SIEM Query:
source="application_logs" ("Out of memory" OR "MemoryError" OR "Memory exhaustion") AND "SimpleDirectoryReader"