Unsafe Deserialization in qiskit (CVE-2025-1403)
Summary
Vulnerability in qiskit (CVE-2025-1403). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Exploitable via symengine. Mitigation: upgrade to 1.3.0 or later.
Original description
The description as published by the source.
Impact
A maliciously crafted QPY file containing a malformed symengine serialization stream as part of the larger QPY serialization of a ParameterExpression object can cause a segfault within the symengine library, allowing an attacker to terminate the hosting process deserializing the QPY payload.
Patches
This issue is addressed in 1.3.0 when using QPY format version 13. QPY format versions 10, 11, and 12 are all still inherently vulnerable if they are using symengine symbolic encoding and symengine <= 0.13.0 is installed in the deserializing environment (as of publishing there is no newer compatible release of symengine available). Using QPY 13 is strongly recommended for this reason.
The symengine 0.14.0 release has addressed the segfault issue, but it is backward incompatible and will not work with any Qiskit release; it also prevents loading a payload generated with any other version of symengine. Using QPY 13 is strongly recommended for this reason.
It is also strongly suggested to patch the locally installed version of symengine in the deserializing environment to prevent the specific segfault. The commit [1] can be applied on top of symengine 0.13.0 and used to build a patched python library that will not segfault in the presence of a malformed payload and instead raise a RuntimeError which will address the vulnerability.
Workarounds
As QPY is backwards compatible qiskit.qpy.load() function will always attempt to deserialize the `symengi…
Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD GitHub Advisory OSV
Auto-generated summary
Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.
A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-1403 has been found in qiskit.
Attackers can target a specific entry point like symengine over the network to misuse the product.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade qiskit to 1.3.0 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "qiskit CVE-2025-1403" on the vendor's site.
CVE-2025-1403 (qiskit) — CWE-502
Attack vector: remote (network-reachable) / unauthenticated / no user interaction
Attack surface: symengine / ParameterExpression / RuntimeError / use_symengine
Patched: 1.3.0 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.
Unsafe deserialization (CWE-502) exists in qiskit. Attackers reach the vulnerable code path via symengine without authentication.
Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of qiskit. Attack surface: symengine / ParameterExpression / RuntimeError / use_symengine.
Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
Update to 1.3.0.
Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.
Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'qiskit' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.
Response actions
Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order
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1Identify exposure identify
grep -r 'qiskit' . | grep -v node_modulesリポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で
qiskitを grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。 -
2Apply patch patch
Upgrade qiskit to 1.3.0ステージング環境で 1.3.0 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
-
3Post-deployment verification verify
Confirm patched version is live in productionパッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。
Affected packages
References
- advisory nvd.nist.gov
- package github.com
- web ibm.com
- web github.com
- web github.com