GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in chainguard.dev/melange. A fix is available for chainguard.dev/melange — see the affected versions and patch details below.
melange has a path traversal in license-path which allows reading files outside workspace
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 GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9.
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-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 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 377,166 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
chainguard.dev/melangeReal-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
An attacker who can influence a melange configuration file (e.g., through pull request-driven CI or build-as-a-service scenarios) could read arbitrary files from the host system. The LicensingInfos function in pkg/config/config.go reads license files specified in copyright[].license-path without validating that paths remain within the workspace directory, allowing path traversal via ../ sequences. The contents of the traversed file are embedded into the generated SBOM as license text, enabling exfiltration of sensitive data through build artifacts.
Fix: Merged in commit 2f95c9f4
Acknowledgements
melange thanks Oleh Konko (@1seal) from 1seal for discovering and reporting this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | chainguard.dev/melange | ≥ 0.14.0&&< 0.40.3 | 0.40.3go get chainguard.dev/melange@v0.40.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for chainguard.dev/melange, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update chainguard.dev/melange to 0.40.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 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 GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9. 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-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-2w4f-9fgg-q2v9 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.