CVE-2023-5654 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-285 vulnerability in react-devtools-core. A fix is available for react-devtools-core — see the affected versions and patch details below.
React Developer Tools extension Improper Authorization vulnerability
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-5654.
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-2023-5654 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
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
react-devtools-corenpmDescription
The React Developer Tools extension registers a message listener with window.addEventListener('message', <listener>) in a content script that is accessible to any webpage that is active in the browser. Within the listener is code that requests a URL derived from the received message via fetch(). The URL is not validated or sanitised before it is fetched, thus allowing a malicious web page to arbitrarily fetch URL’s via the victim's browser.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | react-devtools-core | all versions | 4.28.4npm install react-devtools-core@4.28.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for react-devtools-core, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update react-devtools-core to 4.28.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-5654 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-2023-5654 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-5654. 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-2023-5654 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-5654 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.