CVE-2025-12816 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) CWE-436 vulnerability in node-forge. A fix is available for node-forge — see the affected versions and patch details below.
CVE-2025-12816
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-2025-12816.
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-2025-12816 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 377,238 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.
node-forgenpmDescription
An interpretation-conflict (CWE-436) vulnerability in node-forge versions 1.3.1 and earlier enables unauthenticated attackers to craft ASN.1 structures to desynchronize schema validations, yielding a semantic divergence that may bypass downstream cryptographic verifications and security decisions.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | node-forge | all versions | 1.3.2npm install node-forge@1.3.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for node-forge, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update node-forge to 1.3.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-12816 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-2025-12816 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-12816. 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 is rated Important for Red Hat products due to an interpretation conflict in the node-forge library. An unauthenticated attacker could exploit this flaw by crafting malicious ASN.1 structures, leading to a bypass of cryptographic verifications and security decisions in affected applications. This…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Migration Toolkit for Virtualization 2.9 | migration-toolkit-virtualization/mtv-console-plugin-rhel9:1769034026 | RHSA-2026:1248 |
| Multicluster Global Hub 1.4.5 | multicluster-globalhub/multicluster-globalhub-grafana-rhel9:1770126537 | RHSA-2026:2500 |
| Network Observability (NETOBSERV) 1.11.0 | network-observability/network-observability-console-plugin-compat-rhel9:1771227610 | RHSA-2026:2900 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.8 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:1769615659 | RHSA-2026:1517 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.9 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:1770250889 | RHSA-2026:2350 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.9 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-main-rhel8:1770074713 | RHSA-2026:2568 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 | rhceph/grafana-rhel9:1770630607 | RHSA-2026:2737 |
| Red Hat Developer Hub 1.7 | rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9:1.7.4-1767715042 | RHSA-2026:0261 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-12816 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-12816 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.