200 OK - "Hello! How can I help you today?"

To: itsecurity@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Unauthenticated AI inference endpoint, Syracuse University (128.230.38.78)

Nicholas Michael Kloster / NuClide Research nicholas@nuclide-research.com

2026-05-01

Re: Unauthenticated Ollama AI inference endpoint, Syracuse University IP / Host: 128.230.38.78 Severity: CRITICAL

I’m an independent security researcher. I hold CISA disclosures CVE-2025-4364 and ICSA-25-140-11 and conduct good-faith AI infrastructure research under the NuClide Research umbrella. This is an unsolicited disclosure, no engagement exists with your organization, and I have not accessed, modified, or exfiltrated any data beyond what was necessary to confirm the exposure.

Summary

A Dell PowerEdge R640 server in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies (ist-r640-mafudge.syr.edu) is running Ollama on non-standard port 12345 with gemma4:31b-cloud returning 200 OK without credentials. Five cloud proxy subscriptions total.

Infrastructure

Models

Findings

F1: Free-Tier Cloud Proxy 200 OK on Non-Standard Port (CRITICAL)

gemma4:31b-cloud returns full inference without credentials on port 12345:

curl -X POST http://128.230.38.78:12345/api/chat \
  -d '{"model":"gemma4:31b-cloud","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}],"stream":false}'
# 200 OK - "Hello! How can I help you today?"

F2: Non-Standard Port Exposes Intentional or Misconfigured Deployment (HIGH)

Ollama running on port 12345 (not default 11434) may indicate intentional non-standard deployment or a misconfigured service that bypasses default port-filtering rules.

F3: Model Injection (HIGH)

All models injectable via CVE-2025-63389.

Why it matters

Any internet actor can run inference against your cloud API subscription at your expense, this constitutes direct quota/billing theft. The credential leak (username + SSH public key) exposes your service account to enumeration and credential-stuffing against other services.

One-line fix

OLLAMA_HOST=127.0.0.1:11434
systemctl restart ollama

This rebinds Ollama to loopback only. If running in Docker: docker run -p 127.0.0.1:11434:11434 ollama/ollama.

CVE-2025-63389

All models on this instance are injectable via the unauthenticated /api/create endpoint, an attacker can overwrite any model’s system prompt or delete models entirely. No patch exists as of this disclosure.

Reference

Full technical details, parameter counts, and remediation notes are in this public research repository: AI-LLM-Infrastructure-OSINT/blob/main/case-studies/universities/US/NY-syracuse.md

This research is part of a broader sweep of university AI infrastructure exposures documented at: AI-LLM-Infrastructure-OSINT/blob/main/case-studies/universities/OVERVIEW.md

I’m happy to answer questions or assist with verification. No response is required.

Regards, Nicholas Michael Kloster / NuClide Research nicholas@nuclide-research.com AI-LLM-Infrastructure-OSINT