CVE-2022-35922 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in websocket. A fix is available for websocket — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Memory allocation based on untrusted length in rust-websocket
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-2022-35922.
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-2022-35922 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 376,715 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
websocketReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Rust-WebSocket is a WebSocket (RFC6455) library written in Rust. In versions prior to 0.26.5 untrusted websocket connections can cause an out-of-memory (OOM) process abort in a client or a server. The root cause of the issue is during dataframe parsing. Affected versions would allocate a buffer based on the declared dataframe size, which may come from an untrusted source. When Vec::with_capacity fails to allocate, the default Rust allocator will abort the current process, killing all threads. This affects only sync (non-Tokio) implementation. Async version also does not limit memory, but does not use with_capacity, so DoS can happen only when bytes for oversized dataframe or message actually got delivered by the attacker. The crashes are fixed in version 0.26.5 by imposing default dataframe size limits. Affected users are advised to update to this version. Users unable to upgrade are advised to filter websocket traffic externally or to only accept trusted traffic.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | websocket | all versions | 0.26.5cargo update -p websocket --precise 0.26.5 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for websocket, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update websocket to 0.26.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-35922 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-2022-35922 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-35922. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-35922 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-35922 across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.