CVE-2024-42461 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-347 vulnerability in elliptic. A fix is available for elliptic — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Elliptic allows BER-encoded signatures
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-2024-42461.
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-2024-42461 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 377,333 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.
ellipticnpmDescription
In the Elliptic package 6.5.6 for Node.js, ECDSA signature malleability occurs because BER-encoded signatures are allowed.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | elliptic | ≥ 5.2.1&&< 6.5.7 | 6.5.7npm install elliptic@6.5.7 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for elliptic, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update elliptic to 6.5.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-42461 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-2024-42461 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-42461. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This vulnerability was found in the elliptic npm package, it is an Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature that occurs because the library accepts non-strictly BER-encoded signatures.This allows an attacker to create another valid signature for the same message, which may cause issues in systems that rely on…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.4 for RHEL 8 | multicluster-engine/addon-manager-rhel8:v2.4.6-12 | RHSA-2024:8533 |
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.5 for RHEL 9 | multicluster-engine/console-mce-rhel9:v2.5.7-3 | RHSA-2024:6738 |
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.6 for RHEL 8 | multicluster-engine/assisted-image-service-rhel8:v2.6.3-2 | RHSA-2024:7759 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.10 for RHEL 9 | rhacm2/console-rhel9:v2.10.6-3 | RHSA-2024:6779 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.11 for RHEL 9 | rhacm2/acm-cluster-permission-rhel9:v2.11.3-4 | RHSA-2024:7994 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.9 for RHEL 8 | rhacm2/acm-cluster-permission-rhel8:v2.9.5-9 | RHSA-2024:8546 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.4 for RHEL 8 | openshift-service-mesh/grafana-rhel8:2.4.10-3 | RHSA-2024:6209 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 2.5 for RHEL 8 | openshift-service-mesh/grafana-rhel8:2.5.4-3 | RHSA-2024:6210 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-42461 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-42461 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.