CVE-2024-39899 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-305 vulnerability in privatebin/privatebin. A fix is available for privatebin/privatebin — see the affected versions and patch details below.
PrivateBin allows shortening of URLs for other domains
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-2024-39899.
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-2024-39899 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 377,166 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
privatebin/privatebinReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
PrivateBin is an online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data. In v1.5, PrivateBin introduced the YOURLS server-side proxy. The idea was to allow using the YOURLs URL shortener without running the YOURLs instance without authentication and/or exposing the authentication token to the public, allowing anyone to shorten any URL. With the proxy mechanism, anyone can shorten any URL pointing to the configured PrivateBin instance. The vulnerability allowed other URLs to be shortened, as long as they contain the PrivateBin instance, defeating the limit imposed by the proxy. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.7.4.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | privatebin/privatebin | ≥ 1.5.0&&< 1.7.4 | 1.7.4composer require privatebin/privatebin:^1.7.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for privatebin/privatebin, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update privatebin/privatebin to 1.7.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-39899 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-2024-39899 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-39899. 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-2024-39899 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-39899 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.