CVE-2025-27408 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.8) CWE-759 vulnerability in manifest. A fix is available for manifest — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Manifest Uses a One-Way Hash without a Salt
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.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-27408.
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-2025-27408 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 378,567 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.
manifestnpmDescription
Summary
Manifest employs a weak password hashing implementation that uses SHA3 without a salt. This exposes user passwords to a higher risk of being cracked if an attacker gains access to the database. Without the use of a salt, identical passwords across multiple users will result in the same hash, making it easier for attackers to identify and exploit patterns, thereby accelerating the cracking process.
Details
Analysis of the application source code reveals that user passwords are hashed using the SHA3 algorithm without implementing a unique salt per user.
const newUser: AuthenticableEntity = entityRepository.create(signupUserDto)
newUser.password = SHA3(newUser.password).toString()
This approach results in deterministic password hashes, which can be identified by comparing the hashes for users with matching credentials.
PoC
- Create two users with the same password (it could be admin or any other authenticatable entity)
- Extract their password hashes from the database
- Verify that both hashes are identical, confirming the absence of unique salts
Impact
This is a cryptographic weakness vulnerability that affects all users of the system. The lack of a unique salt when hashing passwords reduces protection against database breaches, as attackers who gain access to the database can more efficiently crack user passwords. Since identical passwords result in identical hashes, attackers can use precomputed hash databases (e.g., Rainbow Tables) or offline brute-force attacks to reverse the hashes and obtain user passwords, increasing the risk of compromised accounts and further system exploitation.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | manifest | all versions | 4.9.2npm install manifest@4.9.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for manifest, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update manifest to 4.9.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-27408 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-2025-27408 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-27408. 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-2025-27408 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-27408 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.