How severe is CVE-2026-33894?

CVE-2026-33894 has a CVSS score of 7.5/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2026-33894?

CVE-2026-33894 affects the following packages: node-forge (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix CVE-2026-33894?

Update node-forge to 1.4.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-33894 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2026-33894 in my npm dependencies?

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.

How do I mitigate CVE-2026-33894 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against CVE-2026-33894?

O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-33894 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.

Is CVE-2026-33894 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2026-33894 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2026-33894?

CVE-2026-33894 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.5%, placing it in the 40th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2026-33894?

CVE-2026-33894 is classified as Improper Input Validation (CWE-20), CWE-347 (CWE-347). These weakness types describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was CVE-2026-33894 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2026-33894 was published on March 27, 2026 and was last updated on September 12, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦

📦 npm

Not in CISA KEV

HIGH severity

CVE-2026-33894 — node-forge

HIGH

CVE-2026-33894 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in node-forge. A fix is available for node-forge — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Forge has signature forgery in RSA-PKCS due to ASN.1 extra field

Also known asCVE-2026-85393 GHSA-ppp5-5v6c-4jwp

Published

Mar 27, 2026

Updated

Sep 12, 2026

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Sep 21, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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.
CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-33894.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs40th percentile — riskier than 40% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

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-2026-33894 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 377,333 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

1 pkg affected

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.

4Kother npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream

node-forgenpm

30.7Mdownloads / week

Description

Forge (also called node-forge) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to version 1.4.0, RSASSA PKCS#1 v1.5 signature verification accepts forged signatures for low public exponent keys (e=3). Attackers can forge signatures by stuffing “garbage” bytes within the ASN structure in order to construct a signature that passes verification, enabling Bleichenbacher style forgery. This issue is similar to CVE-2022-24771, but adds bytes in an addition field within the ASN structure, rather than outside of it. Additionally, forge does not validate that signatures include a minimum of 8 bytes of padding as defined by the specification, providing attackers additional space to construct Bleichenbacher forgeries. Version 1.4.0 patches the issue.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`node-forge`	all versions	1.4.0`npm install node-forge@1.4.0`

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
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 1.4.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-33894 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-2026-33894 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.

Tailored to CVE-2026-33894. 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.

Red HatImportant

Product	Fixed in	Advisory
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 for RHEL 8	`automation-gateway-0:2.5.20260422-3.el8ap`	RHSA-2026:24761
Cluster Observability Operator 1.5.0	`cluster-observability-operator/logging-console-plugin-pf4-rhel9:1782839279`	RHSA-2026:34342
Red Hat Developer Hub 1.8	`rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9:1776784286`	RHSA-2026:9742
Red Hat Developer Hub 1.9	`rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9:1777903262`	RHSA-2026:13826
Red Hat Quay 3.10	`quay/quay-rhel8:1779822261`	RHSA-2026:22840
Red Hat Quay 3.12	`quay/quay-rhel8:1779811412`	RHSA-2026:22629
Red Hat Quay 3.14	`quay/quay-rhel8:1779689392`	RHSA-2026:21017
Red Hat Quay 3.15	`quay/quay-rhel8:1780891395`	RHSA-2026:24853

Frequently Asked Questions

Forge (also called `node-forge`) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to version 1.4.0, RSASSA PKCS#1 v1.5 signature verification accepts forged signatures for low public exponent keys (e=3). Attackers can forge signatures by stuffing “garbage” bytes within the ASN structure in order to construct a signature that passes verification, enabling Bleichenbacher style forgery. This issue is similar to CVE-2022-24771, but adds bytes in an addition field within the ASN structure, rather than outside of it. Additionally, forge does not validate that signatures i

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2026-33894 in your dependencies?

O3 Security finds CVE-2026-33894 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works