$ cat lerobot-cve-physical-ai-rce.mdx

First critical vulnerability in AI robotics - CVSS 9.3 in Hugging Face LeRobot

May 4, 2026 · #cybersec #ai #lerobot #hugging-face #robots #cve

First critical vulnerability in AI robotics - CVSS 9.3 in Hugging Face LeRobot

LeRobot - the open-source AI robotics platform from Hugging Face. 21,500 GitHub stars. CVE-2026-25874, CVSS score 9.3 - critical vulnerability. Hackers can take control of the robot without a password.

LeRobot CVE

April 22-23, 2026 public disclosure (NVD published Apr 23). Critical vulnerability in one of the most-used open-source robotics platforms:

  • CVE-2026-25874
  • CVSS score 9.3 (max 10 - critical)
  • Vector: unsafe data deserialization over gRPC without authentication or TLS
  • Allows unauthenticated remote code execution on policy servers AND robot clients

Scale: LeRobot has 21,500 GitHub stars - one of the most-used platforms in robotics startup production.

This isn’t a web app vulnerability

Listen. This is a vulnerability in a robot you can SEE PHYSICALLY. A hacker over the network - can MAKE THE ROBOT DO SOMETHING.

Is your company buying a Figure or Unitree robot? Ask the integrator if they don’t use LeRobot under the hood. Because if they do - you have a problem.

First time in history

This is the first time in history physical AI has a realistically exploitable vulnerability. Software vulnerabilities are daily news. Vulnerabilities in AI robots - new category.

Researcher-recommended mitigation: replace unsafe deserialization with safe formats (JSON / protobuf / safetensors), enable TLS via add_secure_port, gRPC interceptors plus token auth.

My perspective

This is just the beginning. AI robots are a new category of attack. In two years cybersec firms will train “robot pentesters” - people who test whether a robot can be hijacked over the network.

Because the physical AI ecosystem moves from software demos to real machines. Vulnerabilities now mean real-world physical attacks. This isn’t “someone steals your data.” This is “someone makes the robot do something.”

Remember the words “robot pentester.” You’ll hear them again.

Sources

$ cd ../