CVE-2023-45823 — hub
HIGHCVE-2023-45823 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in github.com/artifacthub/hub. A fix is available for github.com/artifacthub/hub — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Arbitrary file read in Artifact Hub
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-2023-45823.
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
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 by using symbolic links in certain kinds of repositories loaded into Artifact Hub, it was possible to read internal files. Artifact Hub indexes content from a variety of sources, including git repositories. When processing git based repositories, Artifact Hub clones the repository and, depending on the artifact kind, reads some files from it. During this process, in some cases, no validation was done to check if the file was a symbolic link. This made possible to read arbitrary files in the system, potentially leaking sensitive information. 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 |
Affected Products
hubartifacthubDetection & 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-2023-45823 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-45823 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.