GHSA-4jwc-w2hc-78qv is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-755 vulnerability in tonic. A fix is available for tonic — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Tonic has remotely exploitable denial of service vulnerability
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-4jwc-w2hc-78qv.
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-4jwc-w2hc-78qv 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
tonicReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
When using tonic::transport::Server there is a remote DoS attack that can cause the server to exit cleanly on accepting a tcp/tls stream. This can be triggered via causing the accept call to error out with errors there were not covered correctly causing the accept loop to exit.
More information can be found here
Patches
Upgrading to tonic 0.12.3 and above contains the fix.
Workarounds
A custom accept loop is a possible workaround.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | tonic | ≥ 0.12.2&&< 0.12.3 | 0.12.3cargo update -p tonic --precise 0.12.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for tonic, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update tonic to 0.12.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-4jwc-w2hc-78qv 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-4jwc-w2hc-78qv can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-4jwc-w2hc-78qv. 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-4jwc-w2hc-78qv in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-4jwc-w2hc-78qv across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.