GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3
MEDIUMGHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in protobufjs. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
protobuf.js: Denial of service from crafted field names in generated code
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 GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3.
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
GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 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 356,665 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.
protobufjsnpmDescription
Summary
protobufjs generated JavaScript property accessors from schema-controlled field and oneof names. Certain control characters in field names were not escaped before being embedded into generated function bodies. A crafted schema or JSON descriptor could therefore cause generated encode, decode, verify, or conversion functions to fail during compilation.
Impact
An attacker who can provide or influence a protobuf schema or JSON descriptor may be able to make affected message types unusable by causing protobufjs runtime code generation to throw a syntax error.
This is a denial of service issue for applications that load untrusted schemas or descriptors. Applications that only use trusted, application-defined schemas are not directly affected by this issue.
The issue is not known to allow code execution by itself.
Preconditions
- The application must allow an attacker to control or influence a protobuf schema or JSON descriptor.
- The crafted input must define a field name containing control characters that reach generated JavaScript property access.
- The application must perform an operation that triggers protobufjs code generation for the affected type, such as encode, decode, verify,
fromObject, ortoObject.
Workarounds
Do not load protobuf schemas or JSON descriptors from untrusted sources with affected versions. If untrusted schemas must be accepted, validate field names before loading them and reject names containing control characters.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | protobufjs | all versions | 7.5.6 |
| 📦npm | protobufjs | ≥ 8.0.0&&< 8.0.2 | 8.0.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for protobufjs. 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 protobufjs to 7.5.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 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 GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 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 GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-2pr8-phx7-x9h3 across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.