CVE-2023-45821 — hub
MEDIUMCVE-2023-45821 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.4) CWE-494 vulnerability in github.com/artifacthub/hub. A fix is available for github.com/artifacthub/hub — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Incorrect Docker Hub registry check in Artifact Hub
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-2023-45821.
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-2023-45821 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
github.com/artifacthub/hubReal-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
Artifact Hub is a web-based application that enables finding, installing, and publishing packages and configurations for CNCF projects. During a security audit of Artifact Hub's code base a security researcher identified a bug in which the registryIsDockerHub function was only checking that the registry domain had the docker.io suffix. Artifact Hub allows providing some Docker credentials that are used to increase the rate limit applied when interacting with the Docker Hub registry API to read publicly available content. Due to the incorrect check described above, it'd be possible to hijack those credentials by purchasing a domain which ends with docker.io and deploying a fake OCI registry on it. https://artifacthub.io/ uses some credentials that only have permissions to read public content available in the Docker Hub. However, even though credentials for private repositories (disabled on artifacthub.io) are handled in a different way, other Artifact Hub deployments could have been using them for a different purpose. This issue has been resolved in version 1.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/artifacthub/hub | all versions | 1.16.0go get github.com/artifacthub/hub@v1.16.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/artifacthub/hub, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/artifacthub/hub to 1.16.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-45821 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-2023-45821 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-45821. 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-2023-45821 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-45821 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.