GHSA-378j-3jfj-8r9f is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.2) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime. A fix is available for github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime — see the affected versions and patch details below.
go-ipld-prime: DAG-CBOR decoder unbounded memory allocation from CBOR headers
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-378j-3jfj-8r9f.
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-378j-3jfj-8r9f 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 378,567 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
github.com/ipld/go-ipld-primeReal-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
The DAG-CBOR decoder uses collection sizes declared in CBOR headers as Go preallocation hints for maps and lists. The decoder does not cap these size hints or account for their cost in its allocation budget, allowing small payloads to cause excessive memory allocation.
A CBOR map or list header can declare an arbitrarily large number of entries, causing the decoder to preallocate proportionally large backing structures before any entries are actually read. Because the allocation budget is only decremented as entries are decoded (not when sizes are declared), this cost is effectively invisible to the budget system. This is compounded by nesting: each level of a nested structure triggers its own unchecked preallocation while consuming minimal budget (one entry per parent level), so a payload under 100 bytes with 10 levels of nesting can cause over 9GB of allocation.
Schema-free decoding (i.e. using basicnode.Prototype.Any) allows arbitrary nesting depth. Schema-bound decoding limits nesting to the schema's structure, but any field typed as Any in the schema permits unconstrained nesting within that field.
The fix caps the preallocation size hint to 1024 entries and decrements the allocation budget when collection sizes are declared. The declared length is still used for entry-count validation, and collections grow dynamically as entries are decoded, so correctly-formed data is unaffected, even beyond the preallocation limit.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime | all versions | 0.22.0go get github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime@v0.22.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime to 0.22.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-378j-3jfj-8r9f 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-378j-3jfj-8r9f can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-378j-3jfj-8r9f. 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-378j-3jfj-8r9f in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-378j-3jfj-8r9f across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.