CVE-2025-33245: NVIDIA NeMo 2.0+ shifts away from pickle (19th Feb 2026)

Preface: NeMo 2.0 is NVIDIA’s major modernization of the NeMo ecosystem.

Two things to remember about NeMo 2.0:

1. NeMo 2.0 is the training & model building framework.

It focuses on:

•               Model architectures (LLMs, ASR, TTS, multimodal)

•               Training pipelines

•               NeMo Run + NeMo-based microservices

•               Distributed GPU/accelerated workflows

2. NeMo Guardrails and NeMo Curator are NOT part of the NeMo 2.0 training stack.

They live adjacent to NeMo 2.0, serving two different lifecycle phases.

Background: NeMo 1.x modules (ASR collections, VAD, etc.) used pickle because they relied heavily on Python multiprocessing and Python objects.

NeMo 2.0 is moving toward language  and framework agnostic formats

Instead of pickle, NeMo 2.0 favors:

•               Safetensors (for weights)

•               JSON / YAML (for metadata)

•               Parquet (for curated datasets)

•               Numpy / torch tensors loaded explicitly

•               HuggingFace compatible formats

These formats are:

•               Safe

•               Portable across hardware and OS

•               Usable by non Python systems

•               Compatible with cloud trust boundaries

NeMo Curator and NeMo Guardrails are designed to avoid pickle entirely

Even though older NeMo components still used pickle internally:

  • NeMo Curator does not ingest pickle data
  • NeMo Guardrails never used pickle at all
  • NeMo 2.0 framework minimizes it or removes it

This aligns with modern security guidance for LLM infrastructure.

Vulnerability details: CVE-2025-33245 NVIDIA NeMo Framework contains a vulnerability where malicious data could cause remote code execution. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, information disclosure, and data tampering.

Official announcement: Please refer to the link for details –

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5762

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