Off Guard: Breaking LiteLLM from authentication bypass to cloud compromise

LiteLLM is an open-source AI gateway that manages connections to multiple LLM providers, and researchers found that nearly 1 in 10 publicly accessible instances had no authentication or used a default master key, allowing attackers to gain access. Beyond the expected risk of API abuse (LLMjacking, where attackers run up costs using your account), the researchers discovered multiple critical vulnerabilities including authentication bypass via the MCP endpoint (CVE-2026-59822), remote code execution (RCE, where attackers can run commands on the server) through custom code guardrails (CVE-2026-59821), and credential theft via pass-through endpoints, potentially compromising the entire cloud environment.