CVE-2026-2303 — mongo-driver
MEDIUMCVE-2026-2303 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-183 vulnerability in go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver. A fix is available for go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver — see the affected versions and patch details below.
mongo-go-driver has Heap Out-of-Bounds Read in GSSAPI Error Handling
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-2026-2303.
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-2026-2303 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 377,636 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
go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver🐹go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/v2Real-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
The mongo-go-driver repository contains CGo bindings for GSSAPI (Kerberos) authentication on Linux and macOS. The C wrapper implementation contains a heap out-of-bounds read vulnerability due to incorrect assumptions about string termination in the GSSAPI standard. Since GSSAPI buffers are not guaranteed to be null-terminated or have extra padding, this results in reading one byte past the allocated heap buffer.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver | all versions | 1.17.7go get go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver@v1.17.7 |
| 🐹Go | go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/v2 | all versions | 2.4.2go get go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/v2@v2.4.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver to 1.17.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-2303 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-2026-2303 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-2303. 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-2026-2303 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-2303 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.