CVE-2023-28635 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.4) CWE-863 vulnerability in vantage6. A fix is available for vantage6 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Defining resource name as integer in vantage6 may give unintended access
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2023-28635.
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-2023-28635 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 378,156 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
vantage6Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
vantage6 is privacy preserving federated learning infrastructure. Prior to version 4.0.0, malicious users may try to get access to resources they are not allowed to see, by creating resources with integers as names. One example where this is a risk, is when users define which users are allowed to run algorithms on their node. This may be defined by username or user id. Now, for example, if user id 13 is allowed to run tasks, and an attacker creates a username with username '13', they would be wrongly allowed to run an algorithm. There may also be other places in the code where such a mixup of resource ID or name leads to issues. Version 4.0.0 contains a patch for this issue. The best solution is to check when resources are created or modified, that the resource name always starts with a character.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | vantage6 | all versions | 4.0.0pip install --upgrade 'vantage6==4.0.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for vantage6, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update vantage6 to 4.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28635 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-2023-28635 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-28635. 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-2023-28635 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-28635 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.