How severe is GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j?

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j has a CVSS score of 7.5/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j?

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j affects the following packages: github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2 (Go). Ecosystems affected: Go.

How do I fix GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j?

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.

How do I detect GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j in my Go dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2. 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.

How do I mitigate GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j?

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.5%, placing it in the 38th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

When was GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j was published on October 1, 2024 and was last updated on February 4, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j: v2 (High 7.5)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk38th percentile+0.23%

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.

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

🐹github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2

Real-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:

https://github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/blob/f95222bdd22d2ac4e5b8ed6fe912b645e213c3b5/metadata/metadata.go#L565-L580

We believe that this map should be an ordered list instead of a map.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🐹Go	`github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2`	all versions	2.0.1

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/v2. 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 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j 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-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j in your dependencies?

O3 detects GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works

GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8j