CVE-2026-24738
gmrtd ReadFile Vulnerable to Denial of Service via Excessive TLV Length Values
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.
Blast Radius
github.com/gmrtd/gmrtdReal-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
gmrtd is a Go library for reading Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs). Prior to version 0.17.2, ReadFile accepts TLVs with lengths that can range up to 4GB, which can cause unconstrained resource consumption in both memory and cpu cycles. ReadFile can consume an extended TLV with lengths well outside what would be available in ICs. It can accept something all the way up to 4GB which would take too many iterations in 256 byte chunks, and would also try to allocate memory that might not be available in constrained environments like phones. Or if an API sends data to ReadFile, the same problem applies. The very small chunked read also locks the goroutine in accepting data for a very large number of iterations. projects using the gmrtd library to read files from NFCs can experience extreme slowdowns or memory consumption. A malicious NFC can just behave like the mock transceiver described above and by just sending dummy bytes as each chunk to be read, can make the receiving thread unresponsive and fill up memory on the host system. Version 0.17.2 patches the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/gmrtd/gmrtd | all versions | 0.17.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/gmrtd/gmrtd. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update github.com/gmrtd/gmrtd to 0.17.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-24738 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 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-24738 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-24738. 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-2026-24738 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-24738 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.