Model Namespace Reuse supply-chain attack (Palo Alto Unit 42)
Date: 2025-09
Affected: Hugging Face / model hub users
Attack vector: supply-chain
Category: real-world
Severity: High

Unit 42 disclosed 'Model Namespace Reuse' attack: when an org's namespace is deleted/reused on a model hub, attackers can re-register the same name and substitute malicious model weights, abusing implicit trust of model identifiers in code.


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):