CVE-2022-23526 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 contains Denial of service through schema file
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-2022-23526.
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-2022-23526 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 377,238 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
Helm is a tool for managing Charts, pre-configured Kubernetes resources. Versions prior to 3.10.3 are subject to NULL Pointer Dereference in the_chartutil_ package that can cause a segmentation violation. The chartutil package contains a parser that loads a JSON Schema validation file. For example, the Helm client when rendering a chart will validate its values with the schema file. The chartutil package parses the schema file and loads it into structures Go can work with. Some schema files can cause array data structures to be created causing a memory violation. Applications that use the chartutil package in the Helm SDK to parse a schema file can suffer a Denial of Service when that input causes a panic that cannot be recovered from. Helm is not a long running service so the panic will not affect future uses of the Helm client. This issue has been patched in 3.10.3. SDK users can validate schema files that are correctly formatted before passing them to the chartutil functions.
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-2022-23526 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-2022-23526 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-23526. 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.
This moderate severity flaw was found in the Helm SDK’s chartutil package, which occurs when parsing a specially crafted JSON Schema file, the parser can mishandle the input, triggering a segmentation violation (NULL Pointer Dereference) that causes the Helm client to panic. This results in a denial of service (DoS)…
| 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/oc-mirror-plugin-rhel8:v4.14.0-202310201027.p0.g68cf97e.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:5006 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23526 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-23526 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.