CVE-2026-23736 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.3) CWE-1321 vulnerability in seroval. A fix is available for seroval — see the affected versions and patch details below.
seroval Affected by Prototype Pollution via JSON Deserialization
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-2026-23736.
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
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.
serovalnpmDescription
seroval facilitates JS value stringification, including complex structures beyond JSON.stringify capabilities. In versions 1.4.0 and below, due to improper input validation, a malicious object key can lead to prototype pollution during JSON deserialization. This vulnerability affects only JSON deserialization functionality. This issue is fixed in version 1.4.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | seroval | all versions | 1.4.1npm install seroval@1.4.1 |
Affected Products
serovallxsmnsycDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for seroval, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update seroval to 1.4.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-23736 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Do not deserialise data from untrusted sources: where the format allows it, restrict deserialisation to an explicit allowlist of expected types, and prefer a data-only format (JSON, Protobuf) over one that can reconstruct arbitrary objects until you can upgrade.
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 as it affects the `seroval` library, which is utilized in `forgejo` within Fedora and EPEL. The flaw allows for prototype pollution during JSON deserialization due to improper input validation in versions 1.4.0 and below. Exploitation requires processing of malicious…
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-23736 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-23736 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.