NIST deprecates RSA-2048 from 2030. Find every one of them before attackers do.
🐹
🐹 Go
Not in CISA KEV
MEDIUM severity

Helm vulnerable to denial of service through through repository index fileGHSA-53c4-hhmh-vw5q

MEDIUMFix: helm/helm@638ebff

GHSA-53c4-hhmh-vw5q is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability in helm.sh/helm/v3. A fix is available for helm.sh/helm/v3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asBIT-helm-2022-23525CVE-2022-23525GO-2022-1165
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Nov 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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-53c4-hhmh-vw5q.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk+0.07%
Lower risk than most CVEs60th percentile — riskier than 60% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.46%0.93%1.39%0.1%0.8%0.8%0.9%May 26Aug 26Nov 26

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

1 pkg affected
🐹helm.sh/helm/v3

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

Fuzz testing, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the _repo_ package that can cause a segmentation violation. Applications that use functions from the _repo_ package in the Helm SDK can have a Denial of Service attack when they use this package and it panics.

Impact

The _repo_ package contains a handler that processes the index file of a repository. For example, the Helm client adds references to chart repositories where charts are managed. The _repo_ package parses the index file of the repository and loads it into structures Go can work with. Some index files can cause array data structures to be created causing a memory violation.

Applications that use the _repo_ package in the Helm SDK to parse an index file can suffer a Denial of Service when that input causes a panic that cannot be recovered from.

The Helm Client will panic with an index file that causes a memory violation panic. Helm is not a long running service so the panic will not affect future uses of the Helm client.

Patches

This issue has been resolved in 3.10.3.

Workarounds

SDK users can validate index files that are correctly formatted before passing them to the _repo_ functions.

For more information

Helm's security policy is spelled out in detail in our SECURITY document.

Credits

Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐹Gohelm.sh/helm/v3all versions3.10.3go get helm.sh/helm/v3@v3.10.3

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
helmhelm
≥ 3.0.0 && < 3.10.3
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for helm.sh/helm/v3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update helm.sh/helm/v3 to 3.10.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-53c4-hhmh-vw5q is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Fixing This On Your OS

If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.

Red HatModerate

Red Hat has rated this a Moderate impact as Helm is a user utility, which when ran locally, interacts with the kubernetes API. As such, a panic in the Helm client does not constitute an availability impact to the rest of the system(s).

ProductFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.12openshift4/metallb-rhel8-operator:v4.12.0-202303301557.p0.g270d2eb.assembly.streamRHSA-2023:1646
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.13openshift4/oc-mirror-plugin-rhel8:v4.13.0-202305091542.p0.gbee629a.assembly.streamRHSA-2023:1326
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14openshift4/ose-alibaba-cloud-csi-driver-container-rhel8:v4.14.0-202310201027.p0.g3dc363d.assembly.streamRHSA-2023:5006

Frequently Asked Questions

Fuzz testing, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the `_repo_` package that can cause a segmentation violation. Applications that use functions from the `_repo_` package in the Helm SDK can have a Denial of Service attack when they use this package and it panics. ### Impact The `_repo_` package contains a handler that processes the index file of a repository. For example, the Helm client adds references to chart repositories where charts are managed. The `_repo_` package parses the index file of the repository and loads it into structures Go can work wit
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-53c4-hhmh-vw5q in your dependencies?

Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works
Helm vulnerable to denial of service through through…