CVE-2023-39914 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-232 vulnerability in bcder. A fix is available for bcder — see the affected versions and patch details below.
BER/CER/DER decoder panics on invalid input
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-2023-39914.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
bcderReal-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
NLnet Labs' bcder library up to and including version 0.7.2 panics while decoding certain invalid input data rather than rejecting the data with an error. This can affect both the actual decoding stage as well as accessing content of types that utilized delayed decoding.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | bcder | all versions | 0.7.3cargo update -p bcder --precise 0.7.3 |
Affected Products
bcdernlnetlabsDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for bcder, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update bcder to 0.7.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-39914 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-39914 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.