GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c — indy-node
HIGHGHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in indy-node. A fix is available for indy-node — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in Indy Node
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-3gw4-m5w7-v89c 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 379,145 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
indy-nodeReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
Indy Node has a bug in TAA handling code. The current primary can be crashed with a malformed transaction from a client, which leads to a view change. Repeated rapid view changes have the potential of bringing down the network.
Discovery
On May 18, Evernym's monitoring of Sovrin StagingNet showed a report of StagingNet losing sufficient consensus to validate write transactions. The problem resolved itself within a few minutes. On May 20th we saw the alert multiple times, and we began analyzing the logs of our steward node. On May 21st we continued to see the alerts with increasing frequency.
It appears that someone is unknowingly sending a malformed transaction, and retrying when the transaction fails. The cause of the errors appear to be the TAA acceptance.
Proposed actions
- Reproduce problem in integration tests and create a fix
- Do a hotfix release branching from last stable (current master have some things merged that are too risky)
- Upgrade BuilderNet, StagingNet and MainNet as soon as possible
- Improve testing strategy on Indy Node to reduce probability of such bugs
Notes
- The journalctl logs also show an out-of-memory problem on the Australia node. We need to evaluate if this should be raised as a separate issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | indy-node | ≥ 1.12.2&&< 1.12.3 | 1.12.3pip install --upgrade 'indy-node==1.12.3' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for indy-node, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update indy-node to 1.12.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c 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-3gw4-m5w7-v89c can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c. 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-3gw4-m5w7-v89c in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.