CVE-2022-23525 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability in helm.sh/helm/v3. A fix is available for helm.sh/helm/v3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Helm vulnerable to Denial of service via NULL Pointer Dereference
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-23525.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-23525 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
helm.sh/helm/v3Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Fuzz testing, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the _repo_ package that can cause a segmentation violation. Applications that use functions from the _repo_ package in the Helm SDK can have a Denial of Service attack when they use this package and it panics.
Impact
The _repo_ package contains a handler that processes the index file of a repository. For example, the Helm client adds references to chart repositories where charts are managed. The _repo_ package parses the index file of the repository and loads it into structures Go can work with. Some index files can cause array data structures to be created causing a memory violation.
Applications that use the _repo_ package in the Helm SDK to parse an index file can suffer a Denial of Service when that input causes a panic that cannot be recovered from.
The Helm Client will panic with an index file that causes a memory violation panic. Helm is not a long running service so the panic will not affect future uses of the Helm client.
Patches
This issue has been resolved in 3.10.3.
Workarounds
SDK users can validate index files that are correctly formatted before passing them to the _repo_ functions.
For more information
Helm's security policy is spelled out in detail in our SECURITY document.
Credits
Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | helm.sh/helm/v3 | all versions | 3.10.3go get helm.sh/helm/v3@v3.10.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for helm.sh/helm/v3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update helm.sh/helm/v3 to 3.10.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-23525 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-23525 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-23525. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat has rated this a Moderate impact as Helm is a user utility, which when ran locally, interacts with the kubernetes API. As such, a panic in the Helm client does not constitute an availability impact to the rest of the system(s).
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 | openshift4/metallb-rhel8-operator:v4.12.0-202303301557.p0.g270d2eb.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:1646 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.13 | openshift4/oc-mirror-plugin-rhel8:v4.13.0-202305091542.p0.gbee629a.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:1326 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 | openshift4/ose-alibaba-cloud-csi-driver-container-rhel8:v4.14.0-202310201027.p0.g3dc363d.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:5006 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23525 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-23525 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.