CVE-2024-56138 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4) CWE-299 vulnerability in github.com/notaryproject/notation-go. A fix is available for github.com/notaryproject/notation-go — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Timestamp signature generation lacks certificate revocation check in notion-go
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-2024-56138.
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/notaryproject/notation-goReal-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
notion-go is a collection of libraries for supporting sign and verify OCI artifacts. Based on Notary Project specifications. This issue was identified during Quarkslab's audit of the timestamp feature. During the timestamp signature generation, the revocation status of the certificate(s) used to generate the timestamp signature was not verified. During timestamp signature generation, notation-go did not check the revocation status of the certificate chain used by the TSA. This oversight creates a vulnerability that could be exploited through a Man-in-The-Middle attack. An attacker could potentially use a compromised, intermediate, or revoked leaf certificate to generate a malicious countersignature, which would then be accepted and stored by notation. This could lead to denial of service scenarios, particularly in CI/CD environments during signature verification processes because timestamp signature would fail due to the presence of a revoked certificate(s) potentially disrupting operations. This issue has been addressed in release version 1.3.0-rc.2 and all users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/notaryproject/notation-go | ≥ 1.2.0-beta.1&&< 1.3.0-rc.2 | 1.3.0-rc.2go get github.com/notaryproject/notation-go@v1.3.0-rc.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/notaryproject/notation-go, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/notaryproject/notation-go to 1.3.0-rc.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-56138 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-56138 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.