Incorrect delegation lookups can make go-tuf download the wrong artifactGHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j
HIGHFix: theupdateframework/tuf-conformance#115GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-362 vulnerability in github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2. A fix is available for github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2Real-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
During the ongoing work on the TUF conformance test suite, we have come across a test that reveals what we believe is a bug in go-tuf with security implications. The bug exists in go-tuf delegation tracing and could result in downloading the wrong artifact.
We have come across this issue in the test in this PR: https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf-conformance/pull/115.
The test - test_graph_traversal - sets up a repository with a series of delegations, invokes the clients refresh() and then checks the order in which the client traced the delegations. The test shows that the go-tuf client inconsistently traces the delegations in a wrong way. For example, during one CI run, the two-level-delegations test case triggered a wrong order. The delegations in this look as such:
"two-level-delegations": DelegationsTestCase(
delegations=[
DelegationTester("targets", "A"),
DelegationTester("targets", "B"),
DelegationTester("B", "C"),
],
visited_order=["A", "B", "C"],
),
Here, targets delegate to "A", and to "B", and "B" delegates to "C". The client should trace the delegations in the order "A" then "B" then "C" but in this particular CI run, go-tuf traced the delegations "B"->"C"->"A".
In a subsequent CI run, this test case did not fail, but another one did.
@jku has done a bit of debugging and believes that the returned map of GetRolesForTarget returns a map that causes this behavior:
We believe that this map should be an ordered list instead of a map.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2 | all versions | 2.0.1go get github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2@v2.0.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2 to 2.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.